The Art of Seduction
by I'veGotAnotherConfessionToMake
Summary: It was like the first time, the same rush of emotion, the swell of her heart's internal happiness, only this time she didn't throw herself into it. Perhaps it was he who was different, more desperate, seducing her heart into a catatonic state of adoration
1. A Lusty Beast

**A/N: I got the idea for this while watching the last of Casanova with Heath Ledger and Sienna Miller. Never actually watched the **_**whole **_**movie, so no, it's not going to be like the movie, and if it is than that is just a mistake/coincidence, whatever you want to call it. Sigh… this is mainly here because I've gone through a bit of a writers block with my current fic, **_**To Be Alone With You**_**, though I will promise all of those that have been reading TBAWY that it will be finished. This is just to help with the huge brick wall blocking me from finishing TBAWY. OK, now that I've rambled longer than I ever have in my ENTIRE life:**

Disclaimer: Belongs to the infamous J.K. Rowling.

Chapter One: A Lustful Beast/ Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned

There were three things that Draco Malfoy prized in his life; one, his wealth, two his intimidating name/arrogance/very existence and three, his ability to seduce any woman he wanted. It was rather amusing to watch them fawn and preen over themselves whenever he gave them a passing glance. Women fell at his feet; women worshiped the very ground he walked on! It was all a matter of who and when, where and how.

Every place in this school had been marked by him and one girl or another, never the same one twice, and yet, it satisfied him only for a few brief moments. However, the chase never seemed to be quite as long as he would have liked it to be. The conversation, or lack thereof, never left him groping his mind for the correct thing to say. More often than naught, it left him baffled and wondering how on Earth there were such beautiful, and such stupid women walking through this life.

It was sad to ponder them the next day, never truly remembering their name, but their faces as they looked at him. So lustful, never loving. Psh, screw loving; all that ever led to was attachment. And the very essence of a Casanova was to _not_ become attached. Make love all night till you can't move anymore, yes, but never allow yourself, or your temporary lover, to become attached.

Of course there were the women he wanted to have more than once. Like that Patil twin, Parvati (or was it Padma)? He couldn't remember, not that it mattered. He'd had both of them, which pretty much squashed any second helpings he thought he needed. He got what he needed and then he got rid of them, never caring if they were hurt. It was the price these women played for a night of pure pleasure. At least that was what he loved to think. He wanted to believe that no matter what happened, he left those women more satisfied than they had ever been in their entire lives. He never hung around long enough to think otherwise. Plus, the looks he received the next day over breakfast, the notes he found in his book bag, only helped to fuel that fire. It was so desirable to know that what he could do to women left both of he and them satisfied.

But both were temporary, fleeting, passing feelings. He may have left satisfied, but there was a reason why night after night he searched and searched for compassion and passion both, searching and searching, but never finding. Every body that lay beneath him only added fuel to the ever burning fire, one that was already lit, but someone kept throwing lighter fluid onto the flames, watching as they rose higher and higher, consuming whatever was in their path. At times he could even feel that heat in his fingertips, spreading from his own body into theirs, only to come ricocheting back to him tenfold.

Draco Malfoy was never one to doubt his abilities. He knew that he left them beyond satisfactory. But it was he, himself, who yearned for more, a more pleasing power, a more pleasing note of, dare he say it, love. No, he never loved those women. He was only lustful of them. He could never be pleased.

The bell rang, jarring him from his thoughts. Draco looked up, taking in the bright airy surroundings of the transfiguration room. Lavender Brown passed him, shaking out her long brown hair, hitting him with the smell of a flowery shampoo. She smiled seductively, casually dropping a piece of parchment onto the desktop. Draco frowned and picked up the paper, opening it as he slung his bag over his shoulder.

He read over it quickly, memorizing the time and place of where Lavender had proposed to meet him. Balling up the piece of paper, he stuffed it deep into the confines of his leather bag. Sighing, he stood from his seat paying little attention to his surroundings. He had barely taken a step when he collided with a person. She yelped slightly, stumbling into the desk beside her, dropping a pair of books on the ground.

Bending, Draco picked them up and turned to look at the person he had bumped. He scowled immediately as his eyes locked on a pair of angry, brown, Gryffindor eyes.

Dropping the two books on the desk she was leaning against, Draco bent in close to her face and whispered harshly, "Watch were you're going, Muddy."

Hermione Granger merely furrowed her eyebrows together in exasperation. "Your quips and barbs have hardly any effect on me anymore, Malfoy. Perhaps it is too much of a task to suggest that you use that mushy substance in your over-inflated head to come up with something better?"

And with that, Granger shoved Malfoy out of her way, picked up her two books and strode from the room, nose held high in the air.

Oh, how he despised that girl. Her very presence in this world was too much of a burden what with her despicable bushy hair, book-smarts and annoying Gryffindor pride. As if she could ever be better then him. He had everything. Beautiful women, good looks, and, of course, money. How petty all of that seemed, he realized as he strode from the room, the leather strap of his bag held firmly in his hands.

The loud hustle and bustle of his peers shocked him from his reverie. Girls smiled as he passed, casting flirty glances his way whenever they made eye contact. He smirked back, smooth on the exterior and full to the brim with confusion and anxiety on the interior.

"Hello," Purred a voice to his right, just as a hand poked out from the shadows, pulling him into her and against the cold, stone wall. "Where have you been all this time?"

"I can't stay," Draco mumbled pulling away from his captor and looking deep into a fellow Slytherin girls eyes. She pouted and latched onto his school robes, arching her back from the wall so that her hips stuck out provocatively towards him. "Stop."

"You weren't saying that last night," She purred at him, rubbing against him.

Draco pulled back sharply, knocking his elbow against a marble statue. "Stay away from me, Daphne. Last night was only a one-time thing. Give it a rest."

Daphne looked slightly hurt, her green eyes blurring ever so softly before returning to their normal sharp color. She shook her head softly, blond curls swaying from side to side. "You don't mean that, I know it."

Scoffing, Draco came within an inch of Daphne Greengrass, taking both of her wrists in her hands and holding them to her sides, he sneered into her face, "Never have I meant something more than I do now. You think that after last night I would simply fall head over heels in love with you? Never have I felt so repulsed by the sight of a woman, especially one who grovels for sex."

Daphne's green eyes grew dark with distaste. "You are a horrible, horrible _boy_, Draco Malfoy. You seem as if you can handle the fates of a woman, you seem as if you can handle a night, followed by more of passion, but let me tell you something, Draco Malfoy."

Draco peered into Daphne's eyes regretful of all their past encounters. "What, Greengrass? What do you think is so important that I must hear of it from the likes of you?"

Although slightly hurt by the sudden change of names, Daphne yanked her arms free, taking his chin in her right hand, she held it with a mighty strength that surprised Draco and sneered her last sentence to the Head Boy. "You are nothing more than a scared _child_. You hide your insecurities with women behind sultry words and coy playful actions. You make it seem as though they are more than anything else in the world to you. I think you're a _coward_! Nothing more than a sick, perverted coward!"

It could have been the way Daphne Greengrass looked at the moment, so full of contempt. Or maybe it was the way she sneered the word coward in his face as though she were the first. But Draco Malfoy was not a coward. He did many things that others were fearful of, and damn him if a simple woman made him think less than that. So he did the next thing that came to his mind without thought. Raising his left hand into the air, he brought it down swiftly making contact with the Slytherin's cheek. A painful ringing filled Draco's ears when he saw Daphne's head snap to the side, blond curls falling into her face. An angry red mark colored her flesh, as slowly and softly, Daphne raised a hand to her face, fingering the slap.

There was a collective gasp from behind them; Draco turned quickly, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. Hermione Granger stood resolute in front of the scene before her, her mouth agape and the ends of her bushy hair wild with electricity. She took a step forward then hesitated.

"Mind your own business, Granger," Draco said, releasing Daphne from his hold and taking a step back.

"I never knew how much of an asshole you were till just this moment, Malfoy," Hermione said, coming up to Daphne who had tears rolling over her supple cheeks. Despite their animosity, Daphne allowed the Head Girl to take her in her arms and pull her away down the slowly emptying hall towards the nearest bathroom. Draco watched them go with slight trepidation. What would happen to him if Granger ratted him out? What if Daphne decided to paint his true colors upon the stone wall for the entire world to see?

He stepped out of the dim shadows watching Hermione Granger lead Daphne Greengrass into the bathroom, the latter one shaking with obvious sobs.

Though he was sorry to admit this, he noticed that Granger failed to make an appearance in the rest of the afternoon's classes. It didn't bother him, but it did concern him. What Daphne or Granger said could affect his life from here on out.

**-x-**

Lavender Brown preened at her reflection in the full length mirror in the second floor bathroom. She twirled slightly, watching her skirt that rose above mid-thigh and threatening to expose her lacy underwear. She smirked to her reflection, puckering her lips and applying another layer of gloss to her shimmering mouth. Smiling, she moved her head this way and that, studying for the most seductive pose.

Behind her a stall door opened and out came Hermione Granger and Daphne Greengrass. Lavender looked at them suspiciously.

"What were you two doing in the same stall?"

Hermione nor Daphne had to answer for Daphne's pale face turned slightly green and she regurgitated onto the floor, Hermione scrambling to hold her hair back.

Lavender narrowed her eyes, swallowing hurriedly to keep from retching herself. "How come I didn't hear you before?"

"I placed a charm on the stall so that anyone who was made sick by the sound of retching wouldn't hear," Hermione said softly, helping Daphne to the nearest sink where she leaned her against the white ceramic. "Obviously, you're made sick by the sounds of retching."

Scoffing and raising an indignant eyebrow, Lavender turned back to the mirror and ran her fingers through the silky tendrils of her hair. She smoothed out a few fly-away wisps, parting her side part more prominently. Her blue eyes twinkled in the bathroom's light.

"Where are you going?" Hermione questioned as she wet a towel with cool water and placed it to Daphne's forehead, mopping away a sheen of sweat and little droplets of vomit. Daphne moaned rather dramatically, her head swaying as though it were too heavy to keep still.

"What does it matter to you?" Lavender shot back. She looked closer at Daphne, seeming to have just recognized her. "Why are you helping a Slytherin?"

Hermione looked at Lavender with nothing more than ill-contempt. "What does it matter to you?"

Scoffing for a second time, Lavender crossed her arms, placing them under her chest so as to further accentuate her bosom. Hermione watched with slight disgust. Lavender noticed her watching through the mirror.

"I bet you're just jealous, Granger, that no one will ever want to make love to you," Lavender dabbed her middle finger on her lips, smoothing out the thicker layers of gloss.

Smiling rather manically, Hermione turned fully towards her fellow Gryffindor and said, "You mean, am I jealous that no one will ever call me a whore?"

Tension flooded the room faster than was humanly possible. Daphne narrowed her eyes at Lavender, groaning as she let her head fall against the mirror. Lavender pivoted slowly on her heel, fixing Hermione with a look that could freeze hell ten times over.

"I am no whore," Lavender said, her voice laced with spite.

"Whatever you tell yourself to make you feel better afterwards isn't a concern of mine, Lavender," Hermione said, crossing her arms over her chest. "You're going to see Malfoy aren't you?"

Lavender raised her head into the air indignantly. "What's it to you?"

Daphne turned to her with a voice of malice. "Draco Malfoy will do nothing but break your heart. You think that he's going to shag you and then fall in love with you? Then why don't you ask the other fifty girls he's shagged this year and find out the cold, hard truth?"

"What are you on about?" Lavender said, refusing in her head to believe a single word of what Greengrass was saying. "It doesn't concern me, anyway. I've got to be going."

And with that Lavender Brown exited the bathroom leaving behind a thick, pungent odor of perfume. Enough so that when Hermione helped Daphne to her dormitories later that night, she swore she could smell it on her clothes.

**-x-**

Draco Malfoy was leaning jauntily against the opposite wall of the classroom where he had arranged to meet Lavender Brown. The girl was already five minutes late, another five more, and Draco would be leaving without giving Lavender the chance to reschedule. And then the most pungent smell filled his nostrils. At first it smelt rather nice, like lilacs or something close to that. But as he saw the tall, thin figure of Lavender Brown tottering down the hall, the smell became almost unbearable.

Lavender paused at the door of the classroom, opening the door softly and poking her head inside. Draco pushed himself off of the wall and strode up behind her, silent as a mouse. He reached out his hands and touched Lavender's back, quickly covering her mouth when she let out a yelp of surprise. Holding his breath, he lowered his face to her neck, kissing the spot just below her earlobe.

She sighed in what she must have thought aroused him; Draco decided then and there that this was going to be one of those times when the only thing he focused on what shagging the girl and then leaving sooner than normal.

"I'm sorry I'm late," Lavender mumbled, leaning her head back on Draco's shoulder as he continued to kiss down her neck, his hands reaching up her stomach to cup her breasts. She sighed again, this time louder.

Draco remained silent as he turned Lavender round and pushed her all but gently into the room. Lavender smiled an odd appearance on her face.

"Rough, eh?" She asked, taking a step towards him only to find that he shoved her immediately back onto a desk. Draco, again, said nothing. He began to swiftly unbutton her top, taking short gasping breaths so as to breathe as little of her scent as possible.

Where normally he was tender and genteel when it came to these matters, an unknown anger had swelled inside of the man, obstructing his normal patterns. All other times there was foreplay. All other times, he took his time making sure that when they came, it was at the precise moment. But not tonight. All he could think of was Daphne Greengrass's face right after he had slapped her and then Granger's when she came to the rescue, her cruel words spinning round and round like a carousel in his mind.

"Are you alright, Draco?" Lavender asked, after having succeeded in removing Draco's shirt. She could feel the pounding of his heart beneath his skin, frantic as if to escape.

For the third time, Draco did not respond. He kept envisioning Hermione Granger's face as she spoke. He kept seeing the way she had shoved him out of the way in transfiguration. He saw her bushy head close to Daphne's curly blond one, supporting her as the other sobbed uncontrollably.

He was on auto-pilot. He did the things that he normally did, though rather rushed. Lavender would just begin to moan with pleasure before he moved to the next thing, never really satisfying her completely.

Lavender bit down on her lip hard and grew angry. She yanked at his hair, gaining elicit curses and harsh glances, only to watch as Draco's eyes clouded over again absorbed with his own thoughts. She removed every article of clothing with the ill intent of hurting him.

"Draco," She moaned, grabbing a handful of his blond locks as he kissed a trail down her neck and between her breasts. He looked her in the eye, panting loudly. His eyes were bright and glazed; his pale skin was ridden with beads of sweat.

"What?" He asked breathlessly. He loomed over her, suddenly acting like the Draco she had expected, the one she had heard such passionate things about.

Lavender relaxed and pulled him down to her, pressing his slightly yielding lips to her own.

**-x-**

Both were panting heavily, lying back on the desk. Lavender closed her heavy lids, rubbing her fingers up and down her stomach. The desk shuddered slightly, a coldness settled over Lavender's sweaty body.

"That was…" Lavender began only to trail off. Her eyes remained closed as she smiled widely, not caring that she may look like an idiot.

Draco stood by the door, barely acknowledging Lavender's presence as he hurriedly put his clothes back on. This experience had left him shaken with a sudden fear. While he had been making love to Lavender, his mind had been so focused on Granger that when he came, he whispered her name harshly into Lavender's neck, not Lavender's own. How had this come about? More importantly, why was he thinking of her?!

Lavender shuddered and rolled onto her side so that she could lay into Draco's warm body. She nearly fell off of the wooden desk, surprise etched onto her features.

"Draco where-?" Lavender started to ask before she heard the sound of the classroom door being opened and then closed again. She whipped around to face the worn wood: Her breathing increased, her heart pounded with anger in her chest. "I'll get you, Draco Malfoy. I'll make you wish you'd never dropped your pants for any woman."

Draco stumbled out into the hallway, blindly walking through the shadows to keep from being seen. He had thought that it was going to be like all those other times, but this, thinking of _Granger_ no less, startled him to no end. It unnerved him and made him want to retch again and again until he felt blissfully empty. This couldn't happen EVER again. Never, ever, ever.

He was so absorbed in his pressuring thoughts that he didn't hear Lavender's shrill cry of "BASTARD!" from the classroom where he had left her. He didn't think of really anything until he made it to the common room and opened the door to the sight of Hermione Granger and her insufferable boyfriend, Weasley wrapped in each others arms on the couch.

He slammed the door, eliciting a snort from Weasley and Hermione to wake with a start. She raised her head slowly and peered up at him over the arm of the sofa, her eyes narrowing at him contemptuously. Malfoy almost felt like cursing her right then and there; payback.

He could feel Granger's eyes on him as he walked across the common room, and up the lone spiral staircase that branched off to their own private rooms. Finally, in his room, he felt free of her penetrating gaze. Finally, he forced thoughts of Hermione Granger and Daphne Greengrass to stop at the door. No one could penetrate him in his own room. That would be too much to handle.

Falling fully clothed into his bed, he sighed heavily and immediately closed his eyes wishing for nothing more than to fall into a dead sleep and never wake up again.

**A/N:**

**Bit different than what I usually write. Eventually it will be a romance between Draco and Hermione, but it's hard to not just jump straight into it, so don't be mad if it takes a while for me to get there:**

**R&R**


	2. The Woes of Lavender Brown

**A/N: As always, thank you for your reviews, and please enjoy!!**

Disclaimer: Belongs to J.K. Rowling

Chapter Two: The Woes of Lavender Brown

Unfortunately, the next day Draco woke bright and early, far earlier than he had ever woken before. The sun was shinning, the birds were singing, and yet, he felt like taking his wand, placing it to his temple and killing himself. Last night after he had fallen asleep, he had actually _dreamed of Hermione Granger_! What in damnation was happening?! It was enough that he had thought of her all throughout his encounter with Lavender, but to DREAM about her? That was the icing on the cake.

Sliding from underneath his covers, he removed himself from his bed and hurriedly got dressed, hoping that maybe he could make it out of the common room before Granger even woke up. He opened the door, preparing to leave and then a thought hit him. What if Weasley was still down there? What if they had (and he really hated to think of this more than anything) done something and never left, thinking that they would wake up far before he did? Dare he risk it? Dare he risk seeing Granger _and_ Weasley… _naked?_

Yes, he did.

Draco walked slowly over to the balcony wall that allowed the person on the second floor landing to see into the common room. The couch was empty. That meant that Granger and Weasley must be in her room. Together. Disgusting.

Wrinkling his nose with distaste, Draco ran down the common room steps only to remember that he had forgotten his book bag. He turned, pivoting on his heel, and bounded up the steps, taking them two at a time. In record time, he mumbled the password to his portrait and got his bag, stepping out of the room and all but slamming his door closed again when the bathroom door opened and in a steamy cloud, Granger emerged with nothing but a towel on. She didn't notice him at first, that much was obvious, and as much as his mind cursed him for defiling his retinas, he couldn't look away. What was happening to him? Seriously, anyone who knew, please, just let him know.

It would have been a perfect situation if Hermione Granger had been, say Pansy Parkinson, but she wasn't. She was a know-it-all. She could feel the hot prickling sensation of someone watching her even in a crowded room and turn and lock eyes with them immediately. Who the hell was Draco Malfoy kidding? And yet he stood like an imbecile in the small hall as Hermione turned as if in slow motion towards him and fixed him with a steely glare. She didn't say anything, merely opened her door and gave him the bird before slamming her door and disappearing from sight.

Snapping out of it, Draco positively ran from the room certain that if Hermione Granger didn't defend herself than someone (i.e. Weasley) would. It was just common sense. Sure enough as he all but fell through the common room portrait, he could hear Weasley's voice yelling obscenities at him from the landing.

Composing himself he took off down the hall at a brisk pace, shoving a couple of first years out of the way. He smiled broadly at a pair of girls who giggled and started to whisper amongst themselves like little second years. Slowing his pace, he smoothed down his hair, running his fingers through the locks with shaky hands.

With great concentration he ignored the Gryffindor table, begging the fates that Lavender Brown wasn't there yet. Please let her be sulking in her bed for the rest of eternity. Something, anything, to keep Draco from having to endure the pain of listening to her voice while she wailed at how much of a jerk he was. Or worse… make him have to endure an hour smelling that horrible scent she bathed in every morning. It was torture; pure unadulterated torture. He sat at the end of the Slytherin table garnering more food onto his plate than he was likely to eat in a week. This was better known as insanity.

"Hello, Draco," a voice called from his left. He swallowed hurriedly and dabbed his mouth with his napkin as he turned.

"Pansy," Draco acknowledged. He motioned for her to sit, hoping, praying, that she would be able to take his mind off of things.

Pansy sat next to him on the worn bench, eyeing his plate of food with trepidation. "Are you planning on eating all of that?"

"What else would I do with it?" Draco snapped. "Give it to the poor?"

"Draco, love," Pansy said as she took an apple from the basket before her. "Everyone is poor compared to you. I'm sure even the Queen of England is poor compared to you."

Draco ignored her, though he resigned to eat at a slower pace.

"Have you seen Lavender Brown lately?" Pansy asked, leaning in close to Draco's ear as though they were conspiring, which for all he knew, they were. Draco didn't respond as he forked another bite of pancakes into his mouth. The syrup gathered at the corners of his lips; amber diamonds against his pale skin. "Rumor has it that she cut off all of her hair and has asked Dumbledore to allow her to go to a nunnery. Can you imagine? The horror? And apparently, it's all because of a man-!"

"Pansy," Draco interrupted turning to her and wielding his fork as though it were a weapon. "I do not wish to hear of the woes of Lavender Brown. I do not wish to hear of any woman."

Pansy eyed the Head Boy suspiciously. "What's gotten into you?"

"A lot of things," Draco replied, shoveling food into his mouth in a most undignified way.

Silence loomed between the two for a moment. Pansy bit small chunks from her piece of fruit while watching Draco with undisguised shock. She wanted to ask him what his mother would say, seeing such a disgusting show from her son, but withheld.

"So," Pansy started, clearing her throat rather uneasily. "I haven't seen you lately, if you know what I mean."

"Been busy," Draco replied taking a long drag of juice.

"Too busy, even for me, an old friend?" Pansy inquired, looking up at him through her thick black lashes.

Draco looked back at her, a sudden idea forming in his head. Pansy could be the one to take his mind off of things, most especially his recent mishap with Lavender. He smirked at her in his own way and bent close to her ear, kissing her softly just under her earlobe. His hand traveled onto her thigh, squeezing her toned leg before relaxing and moving slowly and softly upwards. "I could never not have enough time for you, dear Pansy."

Pansy shivered, her eyelids fluttering closed. She bit her lip and gave him a look of lust when he backed away and they locked eyes.

**-x-**

He had her pinned between him and the wall, her legs wrapped firmly about his waist. His right leg began to quiver with exhaustion. She barked a laugh and pulled his head up to hers by his hair, smiling lopsidedly before she planted a kiss on his wet lips. Her chest rose and fell methodically against his own; sweat staining a perfect V down her front.

"I knew that you couldn't stay away from me," Pansy slurred, drunk on pleasure.

"I believe that it is you that cannot stay away from me," Draco countered, pulling out of her and setting her on the ground. Pansy sighed and bent down, sliding her left leg through her underwear again and pulling them up her slender legs. She smoothed down her skirt with shaky fingers, her eyes locked on the man before her as he clasped his belt buckle.

"You've changed, Draco, dear," Pansy acknowledged her voice soft and inquiring. "You _have_ been sleeping around, just like all the rumors."

Draco's head snapped up. "Rumors?" he asked a slight squeak in his voice. Clearing his throat, he repeated it, a shade lower in pitch than normal. Malfoy men's voices did NOT squeak.

Pansy sighed and leaned against the wall, folding her arms over her chest. "Yeah, rumors. About how you screw a different girl every night and then dump them before the bed sheets are cool."

Waving her hand in the air as if she had wet polish on her nails, Pansy stared hard at Draco. "My how you've changed. What happened to that boy that was too scared to even touch a girl, much less fuck one?"

"Was I ever that boy?" Draco countered, stuffing his hands into his pockets and rocking forward on the balls of his feet. He scoffed and looked off, his eyes focused on a distant point that Pansy couldn't define. "I hardly even remember him."

"Maybe you two should get back in touch," Pansy said in her bitchier-than-thou voice as she pushed herself off the wall and patted Draco's shoulder as his face slowly dissolved into a scowl. Wiping her pointer finger at the corners of her mouth, Pansy took off down the hall a swagger in her hips. On second though she turned, her skirt swishing around her hips provocatively. "Oh, and thanks for the quickie. Always knew you were reliable."

Draco's scowl deepened. "Always useful to have a couple of whores around when all the fresh meat is out," Draco replied, raising his hand as if in a salute. He turned on his heel, a proud smirk on his face that rivaled Pansy's indignant mouth-agape look of absolute horror.

"You're a bastard, Draco Malfoy," Pansy screeched as he continued his walk down the hall. "An absolute BASTARD!"

"Yeah, yeah, like that's the first time I've heard that," Draco muttered under his breath.

**-x-**

Hermione Granger smiled and planted a tiny kiss on Ron Weasley's lips before parting ways with the infamous redhead and heading down the hall to Ancient Runes. She squeezed her way through a pair of Hufflepuff girls who glared and raised their voices to be heard over the roar of the crowd.

"Hermione! Hermione Granger!" A voice called from somewhere in the midst of the sea of people. Hermione turned and not finding who the voice was coming from continued walking. She pushed her way to a wall, finding it easier to get down the hall. A hand reached out and grasped her upper arm, swinging her around till she came face-to-face with

"Lavender?!" Hermione screeched, her brown eyes bulging from their sockets.

Lavender Brown nodded her head solemnly, her once flowing mane of brown hair shorn to the scalp. Her somber blue eyes pierced Hermione's own, as she clasped a hand tightly onto Hermione's robes. "I wanted to say something to you."

"And what was that?" Hermione asked rather confused. She couldn't keep her eyes off of Lavender's shorn hair, cropped so short you could see the white of her skin, the freckle just above her left eyebrow. Her face, which was mysteriously absent of her layers of make-up. She looked… like a female monk.

Sighing dramatically, Lavender released her hold on Hermione's robes and folded her hands as if in prayer. "I wanted to thank you, for warning me. I know that I never listened, but Draco Malfoy is a _horrible, horrible_ person, and I feel it is my personal duty to show that to the rest of the female population."

Raising her eyebrows in surprise Hermione smiled rather unsure and said, "You do that Lavender, you go get 'em."

Lavender smiled woefully, and bowed her head as she nodded. "Yes, I fully intend to do that."

Hermione slowly backed away, smiling still. "Uh, listen, I've got to get to Ancient Runes. I'll, uh… See you around."

Brightening rather too fast to _not_ be considered a schizophrenic, Lavender cheered up and smiled broadly at the Head Girl. "Right! Bye, Hermione Granger."

"Right, uh, bye, Lavender Brown," Hermione said as she turned and had to force herself to keep from running away.

Turning as inconspicuously as she could manage, Hermione scratched at a spot behind her ear and looked back for Lavender; she was nowhere to be found. She then took the corner and positively ran to Ancient Runes, shoving people out of her way and barging through the classroom door like the fury of Hell's fires were licking at her heels. The entire classroom quieted instantaneously, as everyone turned to stare unabashedly at the Head Girl who sat winded in her seat near the front of the room. Draco Malfoy narrowed his eyes and quickly turned away to keep chatting with the girl who he was currently sitting next to, who kept smiling broadly and flicking her blond hair over her shoulder.

Clearing her throat, Hermione took out her book and a roll of parchment. She was taking out her quill and ink bottle when another cleared their throat nervously next to her. Hermione looked up suddenly and nearly dropped the glass bottle of black ink.

"Can I sit with you?" Daphne Greengrass asked, pointing to the empty seat next to Hermione.

Hermione turned and looked at the empty space on the wood bench, her mind at a complete blank. Again the room had gone quiet as everyone watched this display of inter-house unity, and to top it all off, between a Gryffindor and a Slytherin. The class wanted to see how the book-smart Head Girl would handle the situation.

Daphne raised her eyebrows and clutched her books closer to her stomach, her knuckles white with anticipation. Hermione nodded suddenly, clearing her books to her own side and motioning for Daphne to sit. The Slytherin smiled softly and crossed behind Hermione to make it to the empty seat. The class waited with bated breath; when would the Head Girl come to her senses and demand that the _enemy_ remove herself from her presence? But it never came. Draco Malfoy even forgot his little game of seduction to watch his former lover and the girl-who-lived-to-infuriate-him converse quietly as though they were bosom buddies. The blond pouted and grabbed onto his arm, but she was already forgotten, the prospect of a night of furious passion melted away by the sight of Greengrass and Granger. The two G's.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Greengrass?" Draco said before he could prevent the words from leaving his mouth.

Daphne turned, her blond curls bouncing against her plump cheeks. She gave him a look, glancing down his person and then at the blond. Shaking her head in a half-hearted manner, Daphne addressed the girl. "I'm so disappointed in you, Victoria Holloway. So _very_ disappointed that you've stooped so low as to screw Malfoy." Shaking her head again, Daphne rotated in her seat and began to pull out her school things.

Hermione locked eyes with Malfoy briefly as he turned to converse with Victoria who was asking what Daphne meant. Malfoy's voice raised indignantly occasionally, attempting to coerce Victoria Holloway that Daphne had no idea what she was talking about.

"I wanted to thank you for helping me last night," Daphne said softly avoiding Hermione's eye. "Not a lot of Slytherin's would have even given a shit, and the fact that you, a Gryffindor, cared enough to comfort me, it- well it means a lot."

Daphne finally turned and met Hermione's eye, biting her lip and working it between her teeth.

"You're welcome, anytime," Hermione said nodding her head as if to convince herself that she really and truly meant every word of what she said. Daphne smiled brightly, turning to the front of the room when Professor Vector entered the class. The older woman looked at Hermione and Daphne with brief confusion, but her years in teaching immature adolescents prevented her from asking outright just what the hell was going through their minds. And Hermione couldn't agree less.

**-x-**

"Ron?" Hermione said into the quiet room. Ron groaned and rolled over, his bare legs rubbing against Hermione's smooth ones.

"What?" He said rather gruffly, scratching his chest.

"Have you noticed anything different about Lavender Brown?"

Ron swallowed loudly, yawning afterward and then rubbing his eyes before replying exasperatedly, "What isn't different about Lavender Brown?"

Hermione sighed softly knowing that Ron hated talking about his ex-girlfriend. "I know Ron, but, I mean, _extremely_ different."

Turning her head on the pillow, Hermione tried to make eye contact with Ron's shadowed face. He turned towards her and a heavy breathing ensued from his mouth. Hermione prodded him on the chest, quickly retreating when Ron slapped at her hands.

"'Mione, I don't see why it really concerns you," Ron said yawning for a second time and pulling the blankets up over his shoulders.

"No reason, I guess," Hermione said, curling herself into a ball and shivering slightly now that the heat of their passions had worn off. "I was just curious."

"You know that old saying, Hermione," Ron said his voice barely audible with the sighs of sleep. "And you know what happened to Crookshanks."

"Yeah," Hermione agreed trying not to think of her poor cat who had gotten too close to the Gryffindor common room fireplace. "Ron?"

"Hm?"

"Why do you think-never mind."

"What?"

"Never mind, it doesn't matter."

"Hermione, if you're going to keep me awake all night, at least stimulate my brain, or another one of my appendages. Take your pick."

"Uh, you'd think twice would be enough," Hermione mumbled as she turned her back on Ron and closed her eyes.

"You'd think that wouldn't you?" Ron said before promptly falling asleep and issuing his first snore of the night. Hermione opened her eyes tiredly. She would never get to sleep with all of this racket. Quietly, Hermione sat up in the bed and stepped onto the carpeted floor. She picked up her underwear and slipped them on before removing her nightdress from her wardrobe. Taking a last glance at Ron, she took the scarlet blanket from the end of her bed and quit the room.

She was about to step into the common room when she heard an barrage of strange noises floating up to her. From her side of the corridor, you didn't have the vantage of seeing down into the common room. And there was no way on God's green Earth she was going anywhere near Draco Malfoy's room. It was probably infested with STD's anyway, so why bother to risk it?

Unfortunately, Hermione was as curious as her poor deceased animal and couldn't bare the torture of turning around and lying in her bed all night wondering what those sounds could be. Well, she could, if she really put her mind to it. But she didn't; it wasn't first instinct to do such a thing, which was what led to the Head Girl creeping down the stairs, scarlet blanket clutched tightly to her person and feet barely making a sound on the stone steps. She cautiously leaned her head out from the staircase so that she could see into the room which was bathed in golden light as the fireplace was lit. At first she couldn't make out anything in particular. The couch, the chairs and the coffee table all seemed to be in order. Matter of fact she was about to turn around and head off to her room and force herself to forget about those sounds when something caught her eye. Something pale and muscular. Something that made her want- no, _need _to regurgitate her dinner onto the carpet.

"Oh, my dear, sweet, Merlin's panties," Hermione whispered unable to tear her eyes away from the gruesome scene before her. There was Malfoy (stark naked- and though she hated to admit it, rather fit looking) and Victoria Holloway (who wasn't so fit-looking and also stark naked) shagging as if their lives depended on it on the hearth. Hermione faintly felt herself gag, and a bile fill her mouth, but swallowed. "Get upstairs. Now."

But she couldn't move. Her feet were super-glued to the floor; her eyes were simply stuck to the two teenage hornmeisters, simple as that.

"Dear God, help me," Hermione muttered as she tore her gaze away and turned to go up the stairs but not before she heard the very end-and thus the worst part- of their passion. The climax. It was like the worst porn film ever made in history. Not that Hermione had ever watched one- she'd just heard about them. That's what happens when your best friends are men. Victoria near about brought down the walls with her cry and Malfoy was almost as bad.

Hermione positively ran up the stairs, utterly appalled. She threw open her bedroom door and then slammed it closed, the moans of the two downstairs fading a notch.

"Hermione? Is that you?" came a small voice from the place of her bed. Hermione turned on her heel, and locked eyes with Ron who was sitting up in the bed, her comforter pulled up to his chin so that only his eyes and fluffy red hair showed.

"Yeah."

"What was that noise?"

"Malfoy."

"I think I'm going to have nightmares for the rest of my life."

"Me too, Ron. Me too."

**A/N: OK, so not the best ending… But it's long:**

**R&R pleaseeeeee! **

**-I've Got Another Confession to Make-**


	3. Down in the Pits

**A/N: Hmmmm… Honestly, I have no idea what to say… I guess just review and make my dayyyyyyy:**

Chapter Three: Down in the Pits…

Hermione thoroughly rinsed her eyes, and then did it again, anything to remove that image from the backs of her lids. She did the required fifteen minutes for people who get chemicals in their eyes and then rested for a grand total of two seconds before repeating. Even Ron refused to leave her bed choosing instead to lie under the covers with a pair of fluffy pink earmuffs covering his ears.

The sun rose the next morning to a frazzled Hermione who had a twitch in her eye and her hair more bushy than normal. She got dressed with shaky fingers, tightening her tie so tight that she nearly choked herself. She nearly ripped out an entire section of her hair when she attempted to wrap it into a bun with a little rubber band.

"Hermione?" Ron said looking at her and removing the earmuffs rather tentatively, his large hands still covering the earmuffs in case of any rogue cries.

"What?" Hermione said grabbing her bag and slinging it onto her shoulder.

Ron gulped. "You aren't going _out there_ are you?"

"Of course," Hermione replied. "We have classes and they couldn't possibly _still_ be down there."

Ron looked skeptical.

Hermione was sure of herself, so much so that she didn't allow herself to even begin to think that there was a possibility that Victoria Holloway and Malfoy were still lying on the floor in front of the fire. No, she allowed herself to believe that she was right so much so that she held her head high and secured her bag on her right shoulder and opened the door, preparing to leave. On second thought, she turned back to her boyfriend who had taken off his earmuffs and was leaving the bed. Slightly startled at his state of clothing, or lack thereof, it took a moment for Hermione to remember what exactly she was going to say.

"You'll be down there, yeah?" Hermione asked, her cheeks slightly pink as she couldn't help but glance at his nether regions every so often. _So that's what it looks like in the day time,_ Hermione thought as she waited for Ron's response. Ron yawned, stretching his arms above his head and then shaking out his leg, as Hermione quickly looked away, red painting itself over the pink of her cheeks.

"I'll see if I can make it," Ron said as he started bending over to get his strewn clothes from various places off of the floor. Hermione turned her back on the room and then coughed nervously.

"Right, I'll see you there then," Hermione said hurriedly as she all but slammed the door and hurried down the common room steps having completely forgotten about Victoria Holloway and

"Malfoy!" Hermione screeched, stopping dead in her tracks and shielding her eyes with her hands.

Draco turned from the kitchenette counter, a glass of orange juice in his hand. He was stark naked. There were two courses of action to take here: one was that he could curse the living daylights out of Hermione Granger so much so that she turned permanently insane and only drooled for the rest of her life in St. Mungo's while he rotted away in a prison cell in Azkaban, never really having the heart to tell the other inmates that he had institutionalized the Golden Trio's leading lady. Second was that he could act suave and debonair despite the fact that he was indeed buck naked and facing expulsion if the Head Girl so much as breathed a word of it to either McGonagall or Dumbledore. What to do, oh, what to do? The choices were both rather good, if he thought about it long enough.

"What the HELL do you THINK you're doing?!" Hermione screeched again, turning around, dropping her hand from her face and meeting, "Victoria Holloway! Oh, dear, sweet Merlin!"

Victoria was dressed… sort of. She was wearing a lacy bra that left NOTHING to the imagination and a pair of undies. Let's just say that we all know what Victoria's Secret was in this occasion.

"DETENTION!" Hermione bellowed, her face turning red with lack of oxygen.

"I think you should calm down, Granger," Malfoy said, taking a sip of his o.j.

Hermione spun around, forgetting to shield her eyes resulting in a full fledged view of ALL of Draco Malfoy's appendages. "I will not bloody well calm down! And for Christ's sake would you put some clothes on? Or a towel at least!"

Ron appeared on the landing having heard his girlfriend's cries. Originally, he had no plan of intervening, most especially if it involved Malfoy getting expelled. That had been before he saw just what was causing said girlfriend to scream her lungs off. He promptly began to retch at the sight of the Slytherin girl's body, over the landing wall landing directly on Victoria Holloway who was standing conveniently directly underneath him. Both Hermione and Malfoy watched with undisguised horror as Victoria was slimed.

"AGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Victoria screamed, her voice so high pitched that all three other occupants had to cover their ears in order to save their eardrums.

"RON!"

"WEASLEY!"

"AGH!"

It was pure pandemonium. Malfoy had ditched his drink on the counter and had taken a towel that wasn't quite long enough to cover him but acted more like a loincloth than anything else as he attempted to find his wand so that he could clean off Victoria as Hermione threatened detention to everyone but Ron and herself and Ron cleaned off his vomit from the landing and carpet below but not Victoria.

Everyone was yelling and screaming until their came quite suddenly a sharp issue of three knocks on the portrait door. And then it became so deathly quiet that a pin being dropped would have been heard.

"MR. MALFOY! MRS. GRANGER! What is GOING ON?!"

"McGonagall," Hermione and Malfoy said at the same time as all three occupants from downstairs scrambled for the stairs and Ron, having heard McGonagall's voice barricaded himself in Hermione's room. Victoria was still covered in vomit and neither Hermione nor Malfoy had enough courage to touch her as they fought to get up the stairs.

"OPEN THIS DOOR THIS INSTANT!" came McGonagall's sharp voice from the other side of the portrait. The Head Boy and Girl made for the bathroom, but were cut off by Victoria who had changed her mind halfway through and decided to make it back to Malfoy's.

"Not my room!" Malfoy cried as Victoria slammed the door and the click of the lock resounded in the otherwise silent hall. Malfoy then pushed at Hermione who was stumbling into the bathroom.

"Don't touch me!" Hermione said in a mock-yell, her voice at a whisper. "I may get an STD!"

"I don't have STD's Granger!" Malfoy said back as they both fell into the bathroom and shoved at each other for the best hiding spot. Hermione yanked open the shower curtain and stepped into the garden tub, pressing her body against the tiled wall. The curtain was yanked open again as the portrait was heard opening downstairs and a set of angry footsteps pounded their way towards the stairs. "Move over!"

"No! Get out! This is my hiding spot!" Hermione said, her voice dropped farther into a whisper as Malfoy stepped into the tub.

"Get over it, there's no where else to hide!" Malfoy said as he too tried to hide in the shadows.

"I can't believe that you didn't go upstairs!" Hermione said, glaring at Malfoy. "Didn't you think that I, or Ron, or SOMEONE would be coming through the common room?!"

Malfoy shrugged his broad shoulders as he peered out through a crack between the wall and the curtain to see if he could spot McGonagall.

"You are so stupid, Malfoy! You are perhaps the most-"

"Granger, shut up!" Malfoy said turning and slapping a hand across her mouth. Hermione struggled against him, trying to pull his hand away from her face. Malfoy pulled her closer and placed his free hand at the back of her head so that it was easier to keep her head still. There were footsteps out in the hall and both teens became instantly still.

Hermione's breathing increased though not from the fear of being caught by McGonagall and having to explain what had happened (other students were not allowed in the Head's rooms unless it was for a prefect meeting or something of that nature), and Hermione sucked balls at lying. It was not her forte; at all. No, her breathing increased for another reason entirely. Malfoy. He was still buck naked with the loincloth doing little to hide all his bits and pieces and the fact that he had pulled her flush up against his bare chest to keep her from moving was sending her heart into convulsions. She liked to think it was because he was such a prick and probably _did_ have STD's or something.

"My, my, my, dearest Mudblood, what would your dear boyfriend have to say about this?" Malfoy whispered into her ear, his hot breath tickling her skin. Hermione made to turn away but his hand was clamped too tight over her lips. Malfoy bent closer to her so that the tip of his pointed nose touched her neck; Hermione stepped onto his foot. Grunting, Malfoy released her and brought his foot up to hold in his hands. "Bitch!"

"Who's there?" Came McGonagall's voice from the landing. Hermione and Malfoy instantly became quiet. Luckily for them Victoria fell over something in Malfoy's room, bringing it down with a loud crash. Malfoy's eyes widened as he stood on both feet properly and Hermione peered out through the crack between the curtain and the wall. "Mr. Malfoy! Open this door this INSTANT!"

"Oh, she's pissed," Hermione whispered, turning and smirking at Malfoy. "And it's all your fault."

"No!" Malfoy whispered back. "Your dumbass boyfriend sneaks in here all the time! Don't let her pin all of this on me!"

"Sucks to be you, Malfoy," Hermione whispered again, her eyes widening as she caught sight of McGonagall opening the portrait to his room. "Oh, it really sucks to be you."

"Why?" Malfoy asked, shoving her out of the way and peering out into the hall. "Where is she? Is she in my room?"

"Move over! I want to see too!" Hermione said, squeezing into a place in front of Malfoy. They bickered for a moment, causing quite a ruckus, but McGonagall was on a new temper tantrum.

"Miss. Holloway?! What in the name of all Merlin's knickers are you doing in here!" McGonagall's voice was sharp, higher in octave by a few notes. "What is that smell? Have you and Mr. Malfoy been having sex?!"

Malfoy began to feel faint.

_Oh, no! There goes my reputation straight down the drain! How will I ever survive?!_

Hermione was beyond giddy. This was just too good! Screw having seen the unmentionables attached to Malfoy's nether regions! Screw maybe being caught by McGonagall for having Ron in her room! This was the fall of Malfoy! This was the latest gossip, and she saw it first hand!

"MR. WEASLEY?! Is that you?!"

Scratch that last part.

"Uh…" Hermione knew that remark any where. It was the "I don't know what to say, but I'm going to stand here like an idiot without a clever remark until someone punches me senseless and I wake days later from a coma and have no idea what's happened but I'm going to be mad anyway" look. Hermione groaned. Malfoy smirked glad that someone else had come down with him.

"Where is the Head Boy and Girl?"

Silence.

Hermione and Malfoy waited with bated breath to hear which one would be the one to rat them out. But what happened next took them both by surprise. They had pulled the curtain shut so that it was flush up against the wall so that McGonagall had no way of peering in and seeing two pairs of eyes watching her from the darkness. Then came the footsteps. They were muffled at first as if on carpet but soon stepped into the bathroom with sharp staccato sounds that reverberated off of the tiled walls. McGonagall's shadow encroached itself upon the curtain wall so that Malfoy and Hermione could see her as she passed by the shower and started to open the linen closet on the opposite side of the room.

Malfoy kept muttering shit under his breath over and over until it became like a mantra and had imprinted itself into Hermione's mind as well. McGonagall turned and Malfoy suddenly stopped, flattening himself as best he could against the wall. Hermione's breaths turned frantic, escaping her mouth in tiny bursts that almost made her fall into a panic attack.

Suddenly, the curtain was ripped open. Hermione screamed from fright. Malfoy fell into the fetal position with his hands over his head.

"Miss Granger and Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall said as soon as Hermione's outburst had stopped. "What a pleasant surprise."

Hermione wanted to scream in her face that pleasant surprises didn't scare you shitless whilst you were hiding in a bathtub but refrained. Her heart was colliding heavily with her ribs, her poor lungs worked over time to keep her oxygen supply in check. Malfoy peered up at McGonagall, his hands attempting to pull the loincloth further over himself.

McGonagall smiled eerily and took a step back. "My office. NOW!"

**-x-**

"Pervert. Did you see the way she kept looking at me?"

"Probably scared shitless by the sight of your hideous body, Malfoy."

"More like yours, Muddy. You were looking at my body?"

"I wasn't the one who was lying on the ground with nothing but a dishtowel on now was I?"

"…"

"Admit it, I was right."

"Why would I do such a thing as that?"

"Because you know I was right."

"I know that you're stupid, does that count?"

"Nope, afraid not. And I am not stupid! I have higher grades than anyone in this whole school! I have better grades than you ever even dreamed of purchasing with your father's money-"

"Shut it, Granger."

The door to McGonagall's office opened and out stepped Ron and Victoria, the latter of whom still smelt like barf. Ron didn't smile or look at the two Head's who stood in uniform line against the wall. He actually looked rather faint as he took off down the hall towards Gryffindor Tower without a backward glance, ignoring the calls of his girlfriend.

"Mr. Malfoy and Miss Granger?" came McGonagall's voice.

Malfoy made a desperate attempt to get an explanation of what it was like from Victoria but she seemed in the same catatonic state as Ron. A walking zombie. The two walked into the small room with trepidation. Hermione looked around interested. There was a wall shelved with books and another that had shelves upon shelves of pictures of transfigured things gone badly. Hermione looked at McGonagall's desk and found it bare but for a quill and ink pot stationed next to a stack of parchments and a lone picture frame settled on the side away from the other items.

"Have a seat," McGonagall said as the door closed on its own accord behind them.

Malfoy and Hermione both sat. Malfoy, having changed before the trek to this office rubbed at the fabric of his robes nervously while Hermione trained the pleats of her skirt between her forefinger and thumb. McGonagall clasped her hands together and leaned forward, resting her arms on the gleaming desk.

"We all know why we are here today," McGonagall began as Hermione gulped loudly and turned the direction of her gaze to the photograph. It took her a while to see the abnormality of it. It didn't move, something that she had grown accustomed to always seeing in the wizarding world. McGonagall's voice interrupted her thoughts, though her eyes never left the picture of the smiling person, indecipherable as a man or woman because of the distance from Hermione's chair. "I want an explanation. From the both of you."

"Professor, it wasn't what it looked like," Malfoy began, his voice pleading.

"Oh, wasn't it, Mr. Malfoy?" McGonagall said. "Please, tell me exactly what it was before I issue your punishment.

Malfoy became silent. If Hermione had been paying attention to the other two persons in the room she would have seen his questioning glance at her, the way he pleaded silently with his eyes for her to help. But she didn't; all she saw was the figure in the picture frame, the gleam of something white against black.

"Miss Granger, perhaps you would be better at explaining."

Hermione stared harder. It was a man; he was wearing a tux, she just couldn't figure out why and where.

"Miss Granger?" McGonagall said, reaching out and slamming the picture onto its face with such force, Hermione knew that the glass covering had shattered.

"Yes, I'm sorry."

"Care to explain?" McGonagall said shortly her eyes ablaze behind her spectacles.

"I-I… I mean… -we were studying-"

"At seven thirty in the morning?" McGonagall interrupted. "While I have never denied your dedication to this school, I have a rather hard time believing that Mr. Weasley would be up so early."

Hermione bit her tongue in her mouth, her heart beating frantically. "I don't have an excuse for you, professor."

McGonagall nodded her head and then pulled a clean sheaf of paper from the stack beside her. She dipped her quill into the ink pot and began to write.

"You both will be attending detention for me for the remainder of the semester. You will have an hour or so after your last class to eat and study before you are to report here to my office and receive your duties. Along with this detention you will be attending a Sex Education Class with the school nurse to further prohibit any late night activities the two of you may be having. Are there any questions?"

"An hour?" Hermione spit out.

"Is that not sufficient enough for you, Miss Granger?" McGonagall said disapprovingly.

Hermione quieted down sharing a look with Malfoy who was smirking at her evilly.

McGonagall finished her writings and handed each of them a replicated note. They looked at them with trepidation, cursing everyone under the sun for getting them into this.

"Now, please, get out," McGonagall said with a weary voice.

Malfoy stood so fast from his chair, Hermione checked to see if it had caught on fire as she stood from her own. They both walked to the door, Malfoy shoving her out of his way so that he left the room first. Hermione clasped the cool metal handle in her hand and turned as she closed the heavy door peering back into the room. McGonagall had taken the picture and was now repairing the glass, stroking the face within with her pointer finger as a glistening tear fell from her eye landing with a soft tinkling noise on the frame.

**A/N: Hey, hey, hey! Latest chapter up and running! Tell me what you think! And sorry it's taken so long to get this up- I've been reallllly side-tracked.**


	4. Lavender Brown's Revenge: Part Uno

**A/N: Thanks to all my lovely reviewers! You have made my day!!!! Anyway, I'm glad for the response this fic is getting (especially since I thought that no one would actually **_**want**_** to read it), and have found the grace in my heart to write the next installment: Plus, I may be having to up the rating to "M" because the content is getting to be pretty mature and I don't want to be deleted!!!!!**

Chapter Four: Lavender Brown's Revenge: Part Uno

"Draco Malfoy?"

The class became quiet, quills standing still even in the hands of Hermione Granger, who had ceased her note-taking to see if more justice was being served to the Head Boy.

Draco Malfoy looked up, his eyes weary, though the rest of his face impassive as he had coaxed it into being. The girl sitting next to him kept sneaking glances at his paper, copying down what he had written and then relaying it onto her own, whilst looking every now and then from him to the Professor addressing him.

"Yes?" Malfoy drawled.

Snape took a step forward, his cloak billowing slightly as if in a breeze and then stopped before his pupil. "Your presence is requested in the Headmaster's office. Now."

"Now?"

"Yes, now."

"Yes sir."

Hermione watched through narrowed eyes as Malfoy stood and made to leave the room, catching the smile on his lips as he closed the door, locking the rest of them away in the dungeon-like prison.

Malfoy whistled a merry tune, giddy beyond measure that he was lucky enough to miss out on Snape's class no matter how much he liked the teacher. He nearly skipped up the stairs to the main corridor, but stopped himself just in case someone was watching from the shadows. In his mind, there was _always_ someone watching him; he was just too sexy to go unnoticed _all the time_.

He was merry all the way up till he found a poster in the second floor corridor, tacked to the wall in the most obvious of places. At first glance this poster was just another one of your run-of-the-mill bright, cheerful posters that usually came from the hands of a Gryffindor, Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, Slytherins being too stuck in their dreary house colors to sway from the norm. But out of mere curiosity, the same kind that had murdered dear old Crookshanks, Draco Malfoy turned his head and was graced with… a picture of himself. Smirking. Odd. Then he took a second glance and found that this was NOT one of those cheerful run-of-the-mill posters! This was one that struck to kill! A piece of hot pink blackmail, taped right there to the wall!

He read the inscription, never believing what he saw.

"I am not pompous!" He said scandalized as he tore the pink paper from the wall and held it in shaking hands. The bold lettering only seemed to become even bolder as the words burned themselves onto his retinas.

**Draco Malfoy: Sex God or Snake?**

**Tired of being used and then thrown away like a dirty sock?**

**Tired of being just another notch on the bedpost?**

**Then join the rebellion against Draco Malfoy, resident prick!**

**This pompous seventh year has been out through the town, scooping up innocent women and using them to his own devices! Not only will he break your heart, he's not even THAT good in bed. He's rather fast, if you know what I mean…**

**The ultimate Minute-Man is ransacking the beds of Hogwarts' girls! And I, Lavender Brown am here to put an end to this treachery!**

**For all the women who have been used and abused by the ever pompous Draco Malfoy listen here: meeting to be held at seven o'clock, (see Lavender for place) to discuss the ways of bringing down Hogwarts' Leading Minute-Man. See YOU there! **

What in the bloody hell was happening? Lavender Brown? Had he ever even SLEPT with Lavender Brown?! He couldn't believe this. First the stunt with Victoria who refused to even acknowledge his presence, which normally would have suited him fine, and then the whole Granger ordeal that had been weighing a little TOO heavily on his mind, and now Lavender Brown was out to destroy him? How would he survive? And of all things to say, that he was a _minute-man?!_ Draco Malfoy was anything BUT a _minute-man_, thank you very much!

He tore his eyes away from the paper, pink staining his vision, turning everything around him varying shades of the cursed color. Looking back at the wall where he had torn the offending paper from, he found yet another one, this time in lime green in its place. He tore that one down and found one in cerulean, and so and so forth till the floor around him was like a that had been broken and spilt its colorful guts around him.

Draco Malfoy was fucked.

And royally so, seeing as to how what Lavender Brown was accusing him of was, well, true. Dare he admit that in any unsavory terms he was a man-whore… yes, he would, but only under extreme torture, and then he would kill the person who made him say it, thus, no one would ever know! Which was how it was supposed to be! Draco Malfoy was supposed to leave this school a legend! Not some silly teenager who had a problem with early ejaculation!

What if he never slept with another woman again for the rest of his life because they knew that he had a problem? Oh, dear Merlin, this was the first step! Admitting you have a problem! Malfoy's didn't have problems! They made _other_ people have problems!

In his fury he tore the papers in his hands to shreds and then began tearing each colorful poster from the wall, smearing some with his scarlet blood and others bent into crinkly balls that bounced away down the hall. He was so intent on getting to the very bottom of this that he didn't notice that he had an audience.

"Ahem."

Malfoy turned suddenly, his eyes wild and his hair sticking up on the sides like two horns where he had grabbed at his head. He sobered up rather fast, dropping the offensive paper onto the ground and straitening his tie.

"Professor Dumbledore," Malfoy acknowledged.

The old man smiled broadly looking from the floor littered with bright confetti and Malfoy who was so obviously perturbed by them.

"I was just on my way to Professor Snape's classroom to retrieve you myself, thinking of course, that the man had you working on something he deemed important," Dumbledore said, raising his eyes brows and taking in the slightly disturbing scene. "However, when I heard your cries of frustration I came to see if I could be of any assistance."

Dumbledore rotated the top of his body looking at the scattered papers that had fallen down the corridor and rolled to a stop at the feet of statues. "However, it would seem that you are well under control."

Under control? What the blooming hell was he talking about? This man was senile, no doubt about that.

"In most circumstances I would issue a detention for having destroyed another students advertisement, but I think that you have enough detentions at the moment to have to deal with another one," Dumbledore said, turning on his heel and walking away down the hall. Draco followed a couple of paces behind him, desperately trying to straighten out his appearance.

They walked in silence up the corridor till they met the lone gargoyle. Both men were standing on the spiraling stairs one uncomfortable with his companion and the other positively oblivious to any thing other than his own emotions.

"Sit," Dumbledore said, gesturing towards the winged back chairs placed before his desk. Draco sat heavily, sighing and rubbing his hands, wincing when he touched the deep paper cuts. "Mr. Malfoy, I am about to ask you a question that will be kept in absolute secrecy between you and myself."

"Ok," Draco said slowly slumping slightly in his chair with the weight of Dumbledore's unasked question already weighing on his shoulders.

Dumbledore leaned forward and cleared his throat, clasping his hands together.

"Lemon drop?'

"What?"

"Would you like a lemon drop?"

"Is that the question you were going to ask me?"

"Well, no, of course not! What kind of man do you take me for?"

"Is that a real question?"

"Respect, Mr. Malfoy."

"My apologies."

Dumbledore cleared his throat again and took a lemon drop for himself, crinkling the wrapper between his hands in a most annoying fashion.

"Mr. Malfoy, are all of the rumors true?" Dumbledore finally asked. His cheeks turned slightly pink, giving him the appearance of being embarrassed at the turn of events.

"Rumors?" Malfoy asked, his voice near to cracking. He sat ram-rod straight in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable.

Red stained both of their cheeks, neither one met the others eye.

"Yes, rumors," Dumbledore said. "About, well, you know… about what was written on Miss Brown's posters. There have been complaints from teachers of the state of their classrooms the next morning. Papers strewn across the floor. Strange liquid substances that dry on the desk tops…Odd smells…"

Draco blocked out what Dumbledore was saying. Holy cow. That was it. THIS was it. How was he going to recover? His reputation was RUINED! Dumbledore of all people knew and now he was going to be _expelled_! Imagine the horror of having your parents told that their son was a sex-addict and had screwed so many people! Oh, he was so going to murder Lavender Brown. And in the most brutal way as well.

He was so immersed in planning out the best way of decapitating Lavender Brown and making it look accidental that he forgot that he was in the Headmaster's office till he was slapped quite roughly across the face.

"Oi!" He cried, jumping in his seat.

"Pay attention!" A sharp, female, McGonagall-like voice said.

Draco looked up and met eyes with Hermione Granger.

"What are you doing here?"

"I was called in, dummy, why else would I be in here?" Hermione replied sitting in her chair. Dumbledore looked between both teens, a small smile on his face.

"Well, did you have to slap me? Most people try talking to get another's attention," Draco said as he rubbed at his stinging cheek. 

"I would have had you been located somewhere here on Earth," Hermione replied.

"We are here to discuss the terms of your detentions," Dumbledore broke in, breaking apart the petty argument.

**-x-**

"Must you ALWAYS be so annoying? Why can't you just keep your bloody mouth shut?"

"Where would the fun be in that?"

"I can't believe that you've been found out!" Hermione said as they walked down the hall. "Bout time someone discovered what you've been up to!"

"Shut up, Granger."

Hermione closed her mouth but started to hum, _dum dum duh dumm… Dum dum duh dummmmmmmmmm…_

"Granger, I'm getting really close to physically hurting you if you don't shut the hell up," Draco said walking a little faster down the hall.

"Oh," Hermione said, keeping her distance. "Just like you physically hurt Daphne Greengrass?"

"You don't know what you're talking about, Granger," Draco said as he turned suddenly and stopped. They were about fifty feet away from one another.

"I know what I saw," Hermione replied.

"But you didn't hear anything."

"And that makes it OK?"

"I never said that!"

"Only cowards hit women, Draco Malfoy. Cowards," Hermione said, crossing her arms over her chest and standing in her holier-than-thou stance.

Hermione looked on as Malfoy visibly tensed. His jaw tightened and she swore that she could hear his teeth grinding. His hands curled into fists and it looked as though it were taking all of his self-control not to punch the wall directly next to him. When their eyes met, his were like molten lava, hot and penetrating in ways that made Hermione want to run and keep running until she collapsed with absolute exhaustion.

"I. Am. Not. A. _Coward,_" Malfoy said as he took a step forward, his face contorted in pure anger.

"Is that really what you tell yourself after every night, Malfoy?" Hermione said, pity etching across her features. Malfoy's anger increased.

What happened next was rather unplanned. Before Hermione could blink twice in rapid succession, Draco Malfoy completely lost it, snarling and then taking off at a flat out sprint aiming for the startled Head Girl. Hermione screamed slightly and then turned to run, but she wasn't quite as prepared for what Malfoy had flashing through his mind.

She had barely made it ten feet when she was brutally tackled from behind, Malfoy's swift breaths fanning over her ear.

"What the hell is your problem?" Hermione wheezed as Malfoy stood and grabbed her arms, yanking her from the floor. "Let me go!"

Malfoy carted Hermione over to a shadowed area, turning her around so that they faced one another and pressing her against the wall. His breaths covered her lips as she struggled for a moment and he held her restrained against the wall. When it became apparent through a narrowly missed kick that Hermione Granger would result in dirty fighting involving Draco Malfoy's crotch, he pressed his body flat against hers so that their faces were near inches from one another. Hermione became incredibly still, her eyes roaming the face that was so close to hers.

"What's your problem?" Malfoy asked, attempting to make eye contact with the Head Girl. She eluded him, looking at his face, but focusing on his lips, his nose, his forehead. "What makes you think that you know anything about me? Why do you assume so many things about me, Granger, as if we have known each other all of our lives and are at the luxury to make assumptions like little bosom buddies? Where do you get the authority to make my life just that little bit worse?"

Hermione finally met his eyes, looking up at him through her lashes. "I guess it's just all of the hate I have harbored just for you, Malfoy."

"Hate had nothing to do with it, Granger. Matter of fact, you might not even hate me at all."

Hermione scoffed so hard that her chest rubbed against Malfoy's eliciting an emotion from the both of them that surprised the Head Girl most of all. Her stomach was temporarily engulfed in that fiery hot feeling she received when she was close to Ron late at night. Malfoy's face leaned in closer to her own and his fingers twitched almost as if to rub the skin on her wrists where they were gripping her arms in place.

"Why do you do it?" Hermione asked breathlessly, pressing her head as far as it could go against the wall behind her.

But Malfoy didn't answer her. His eyes were searching her own, lightening in color as his face kept nearing her own.

"What are you doing?" Hermione whispered. She could feel the heat of his lips as they hovered mere centimeters from her own. Her breaths increased, quickening in pace so that her chest kept colliding with his own eliciting the fire in the pit of her stomach till she was nearly consumed by it.

Again, Malfoy didn't answer her. Their noses touched slightly before through habit, their faces turned to the side, their eyelids fluttering to a close. Right before their lips met, a bell sound echoed through the halls and the classroom doors slammed open sending a tidal wave of students out into the hall.

Hermione shoved Malfoy away with all of her might, succeeding in getting his body the necessary three feet away that lowered her heart rate and sent her mind reeling back to its normal state.

"You never denied it, Granger," Malfoy said, smirking.

"I never denied what?" Hermione countered, thoroughly confused.

Malfoy shook his head and then sprang towards her, pressing their bodies against one another for the briefest of moments before whispering, "I'll bet you that I can seduce you just as well as I seduced all the others."

Hermione's eyes turned dark. "I'd like to see you try."

And then Hermione slipped away, disappearing into the crowd of their peers and walking away with a heavy heart.

**A/N:**

**OK, I'm sorry about the EXTREMELY long delay… I had absolutely no idea what to write for this one and apologize if it isn't up to par, but promise that the next one should be much, much, much better!**

**R&R my little lovelies! **


	5. Mister McGonagall

**A/N: OK, so I'm applying for a job –Starbucks would be nice, but there's the off chance that I'd have to be there at 4:30!!!!!!!! IN THE MORNING!!!! I'm not a morning-person. So, just so you know, if updates get really few and far between, that's the reason why. I'm working before the sun has even risen. **

**Thanks to all of my reviewers! You make me HAPPY:D**

Chapter Five: Mister McGonagall

She hated him. She absolutely bloody hated him more than anything in the world. She hated his face and his hands and his rather fit, muscled body. Merlin, her lips still tingled from their almost contact! How was she supposed to function for the rest of the day now, knowing that their lips had _almost_ made contact! Her lips were reserved for one man and one man only! And his name wasn't Draco Malfoy! It was Ron Weasley!

Speak of the devil, where was he? Hermione gazed through the hall cluttered with students looking for her mysteriously absent boyfriend. McGonagall couldn't have scared him _that_ much could she?

Yes, she could. McGonagall was just that scary.

Hermione tried not to remember that she had to meet the prick for detention and endure hours upon hours of absolute torture and to top it all off, she was horny. That wasn't a word she normally used, just in extreme cases, like this one, when she could feel it from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. It was like being consumed in fire, only it didn't hurt, but if not released, and released soon, she, herself, would implode with desire.

Desperately, she searched the halls for her red-headed lover not paying attention to where she was going. She was about to use a summoning charm when she spotted him with Harry and a couple of the guys from their dorm. Making a straight bee-line for him, Hermione shoved anyone who came in her path out of the way.

"Ron," Hermione said breathlessly grabbing his arm and pulling him slightly towards her.

"Oh, hey, Hermione," Ron said smiling at her and then turning to say goodbye to the boys before taking her hand. As they walked down the hall his face became a little concerned. "Are you OK?"

"Ron, I need you."

"I need you too, Hermione, you know that."

"No, Ron… I _need_ you."

Ron's face became confused as the couple stopped in the hall close to the wall. "I'm afraid I don't follow."

Hermione launched at him, pressing her lips against his and rubbing her body sensually against his. Dammit it all, she still felt Malfoy's body against her skin. As she broke away from Ron she saw his face morph into a look of lust. 

"But we have classes," Ron mumbled as he leaned down and kissed Hermione softly.

"And?" Hermione replied nonchalantly pressing a kiss to his neck just below his jaw.

"You want to skive off classes?" Ron asked amused, wrapping his arms firmly around Hermione's torso and pulling her flush up against him.

Looking at Ron the way that always made him swoon for her, Hermione said as sultry as she could, "That not the only thing I want to do…"

**-x-**

Hermione was panting roughly, sweat covering her body as Ron kissed a trail down her neck and then collapsed atop of her. Grunting, Hermione shifted underneath him till she was comfortable enough and started to run her fingers up and down Ron's freckled back.

Ron's breaths became suddenly lighter like it did when he was nervous. He sat up slightly so that he was looking Hermione directly in the eye. His red locks were plastered to his forehead, sweat beading above his upper lip.

"What's wrong?" Hermione whispered, running her fingers over his cheek. Ron leaned into her touch and closed his eyes before he planted a kiss on her palm and looked back at her.

"I love you, Hermione," Ron whispered in return.

There were many things that Hermione had been expecting with such a declaration. She thought that her heart would soar, skipping beats sporadically, causing her to fall into some catatonic state till he prodded her to say something back to him. But in this instance, the first time she had muttered those three words to someone other than family, it happened so quickly that Ron blinked with surprise, clearly having had expected something of the same nature to occur.

"I love you too, Ron," Hermione replied, sucking in a deep breath afterwards. When she was met with Ron's questioning face she smiled warmly and repeated it, this time followed by a kiss all the while thinking why it felt so weird to say it to him. She knew she loved him, and he her. They always had, always will. Always. Oh, dear God, always… that ensued _forever_. Was she ready for forever? It just seemed so final, like she was signing away her life, never going to be able to do the things she wanted because she would be tied down with twenty kids all with red, bushy hair and freckles galore. Hermione nearly fainted as she looked to the side quickly to avoid meeting Ron's gaze.

"What's wrong, Hermione?" Ron asked, rolling off of her and laying on his side, hand propping up his head.

Hermione looked at the clock and nearly fainted for a second time when she comprehended the time; she had exactly ten minutes to make it from her room to McGonagall's office for her first detention.

"Shit!" She yelled, jumping from the bed and scrambling for some clothes to put on. Ron watched with amusement from the bed.

"Late?" He asked lazily, lounging back across her bed.

"No!" Hermione said, pulling a pair of jeans over her legs and hurriedly buttoning them. She grabbed a fitted t-shirt and shoved her arms through the openings as she grabbed a sweater and ran from the room, her shoes half-on her feet. "Bye!"

Running down the hall, Hermione threw on her sweater and checked her watch. She had three minutes to make it down three flights of stairs and through two corridors beaming with her peers. Merlin, help her.

Amazingly, the way was parted for her, students having learned to jump out of the way instead of being shoved roughly by the Head Girl. She made it in record time with a stitch in her side and blisters forming on the tops and outer sides of her feet from her shoes having slipped over her skin with each step she had taken.

Rounding a corner, Hermione spotted Malfoy walking lazily through the door to McGonagall's office. He turned and met Hermione's eye, smirking as he closed the door. Hermione kicked up her speed a notch and nearly collided with the door, skidding to a halt and barely making it through to McGonagall's office before the teacher's alarm clock went off sounding the time for the start of the detention.

"So glad you made it, Miss Granger," McGonagall said. "Wouldn't want to have to ask what it was that you were doing that caused you to be late."

Hermione's cheeks blushed as she sat in the lone chair. She fanned at her face and shoved her hair off of her neck to help cool herself down.

"Today, we will be having a lesson from Madame Pomphrey on the hazards of premarital sex," McGonagall said clearing her throat uneasily and shuffling the already perfectly arranged pile of papers on the upper corner of her desk. "If you would be so kind as to wait for a moment, I will go and retrieve her. She seems to be otherwise detained…"

McGonagall stood from her desk and walked across the room to a fireplace that was slightly hidden by the bookshelves lined with mis-transfigured things. The older woman knelled before the hearth and tossed some green powder into the small flames, before sticking her head into the inferno and seeming to converse with another person as her hands moved but her voice was not heard.

"You look weird, Granger," Malfoy acknowledged. "Not that you don't always look weird, just weirder than normal. What were you doing before you came here?"

Hermione turned and met Malfoy's eyes. "Why do you care?"

"I could do it better," He said nonchalantly as McGonagall pulled back from the fireplace and addressed her charges. She pretended not to notice the look of indignation of her Head Girl's face.

"Madame Pomphrey will be here shortly," McGonagall sat heavily in her chair. "Meanwhile, I want silence."

The Head Boy and Girl sat stiffly in their chairs, Hermione scowling but glancing every now and then at Malfoy who winked at her in return. Scoffing the fourth time Malfoy caught her looking at him, she turned completely away from him and focused on the lone picture frame sitting precariously on the edge of McGonagall's desk. The glass gleamed in the dim light, hiding the face from view till Hermione moved a certain way and the refraction no longer barred the way for her.

The man was handsome in an old-fashioned type of way. His hair was curly, dark and hung over his left eyebrow in a fashion that exuded he held many secrets. Dark eyes were framed with thick lashes and when Hermione looked close enough, it seemed that his lips were formed into a smirk, but one so much different than Malfoy's. One that reeked of adoration; one that held the secrets that were also enclosed behind his dark eyes.

McGonagall caught her looking, but didn't slam the picture frame onto its face like she had last time. She studied the Head Girl, wondering if smarts were something that allowed her to figure out everything. The older woman also looked to the frame from time to time, attempting to decipher what her student was thinking. Hermione Granger's eyes were glazed over; the light glowed off of her glassy pupils.

And then quite suddenly, the door was thrown open and the nurse stumbled over the threshold, her arms laden with books, slides and a machine that looked as though it hadn't been used in over fifty years, judging by the amount of dust on it.

"I'm so sorry, Minerva," Pomphrey said as the Head Girl shook her head softly and rubbed at her eyes. Draco looked up from his spot in his chair and watched the older woman as she struggled to make it to the table McGonagall had set up. To his surprise, though it shouldn't have surprised him all that much, Granger stood from her chair as though Hell's fires were licking at her arse and rushed over to the frazzled nurse, taking a series of tomes from her and placing them on the table, smiling when she met Pomphrey's eye. He sighed rather dramatically and rubbed at his temple, starting slightly when he met McGonagall's penetrating glare. The old professor narrowed her eyes and looked towards Pomphrey who was now sending Hermione under the table to look for some sort of outlet the Headmaster was supposed to set up to work the machine. Malfoy wearily stood from his chair and took a step towards the nurse. She immediately grabbed his sleeve and yanked him closer.

"I want you to sort through these pamphlets. Find the ones that have to do with sex education and put them in a separate pile," Pomphrey said as the table gave a lurch and Hermione muttered something under her breath. "Are you alright, dear?"

"Yeah," Hermione said, reappearing from under the table. "Just hit my head."

"Did you find the pug?" Pomphrey said.

"Yes, I found the plug," Hermione said, correcting the nurse in a subtle fashion.

"Oh, yes, plug, that's what I meant," The grey-haired lady said as she thrust a stack of pamphlets into Malfoy's arms. He looked weary but did his duty without verbal complaint, quickly arranging the papers into neat piles. "Now, when you're done with that Mr. Malfoy, I would like it if you could return to your seat and then we will begin."

Malfoy nodded his head as Hermione sat down in her chair, moving it so that it faced the projector screen that McGonagall was currently transfiguring from an old quill, suspending it from the ceiling with invisible ties.

The Head Boy completed his task and turned back to his seat, turning it also in the same fashion as Hermione, though a little too close for her liking. Pomphrey took out a reel and placed it in the machine, flipping on a switch and taking a little remote in her hand as McGonagall flipped off the lights and they were all bathed in a glow similar to that of a movie theatre.

"Now, I would like to start with STD's," Pomphrey said, clicking the little wheel and producing a slide of what looked like a fleshy squid tentacle covered in little bumps. "What is an STD, Mr. Malfoy?"

"An STD is a disease contracted through sexual activity that can be spread very easily," Malfoy replied, his head in the palm of his hand and a bored look on his face.

"Evasive," Pomphrey replied. "Not the best answer, but I suppose it'll have to do."

Malfoy looked utterly appalled that any answer he had given wouldn't automatically be considered the _best_. Hermione smiled smugly, sure that when she was called upon, her answer would suffice ten times better than her companion's.

"Now, there are many harmful things that can happen when you have many partners and don't use protection. Sometimes, these things can happen even when you do use protection. Abstinence is the only real way to avoid having such complications as these," Pomphrey said as she clicked the wheel and the slid changed to another of syphilis. "Miss Granger, can you tell me why syphilis is also called the pretender?"

Hermione's face had contorted into disgust. She felt like she was going to puke, many times.

"Uh," She stammered, blinking rapidly. "Syphilis is also known as the pretender because it can look like other STD's in sign and symptom."

"Very good," Pomphrey acknowledged. Malfoy turned and glared at Hermione who was too busy trying not to regurgitate that she didn't notice. Pomphrey changed the slide and all of the occupants had to take a glance before turning away. "As you can see this is what can happen during oral sex."

"That's someone's mouth?" Malfoy exclaimed.

"Yes, Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall said in a low voice. "Maybe now you'll think twice before you engage in sexual activities."

Malfoy's face was indescribable. His eyes smoldered, his hands clenched into fists as Hermione giggled.

"Don't be so quick in your accusations, Miss Granger," McGonagall said, her voice slightly more compassionate. "There's a reason why the both of you are here."

Hermione glanced at Malfoy who was smirking at her. She rolled her eyes and slumped in her seat.

For the next hour, Pomphrey went tediously through slide after slide, explaining in great detail as to how each disease was contracted. Malfoy was then employed a second time, this time to divide the pamphlets between Hermione and himself. They pretended to look through the sheaf's of paper with interest, as though they were trying to be better students and learn about all of this. Malfoy's face actually became rather interested when he came across the one about have to check for breast cancer. He kept glancing at Hermione though as she went through her own stack, with the Head Girl trying to ignore both the pamphlet in his hands and the person who was holding said pamphlet was staring at.

_Men,_ Hermione thought with disgust. _Always obsessed with the female anatomy._

After two hours, Pomphrey began to gather her things and the Head's were dismissed. Hermione stood from her seat, her eyes focused again on the picture.

"Professor," Hermione began taking a step closer and lowering her voice.

"Yes, Miss Granger?" McGonagall replied, no doubt thinking she had some questions about the lesson.

"I was wondering who the man was in the picture," Hermione spilled, glancing back at Malfoy who was exiting the room and Pomphrey who was too engrossed in getting her things together to even remember there were others with her. "I'm sorry, you don't have to tell me, I was just curious…"

"No, it's quite alright," McGonagall said, taking the picture in her hands. "He was my husband for the briefest of moments."

"Oh," Hermione said, surprised. "What happened to him?"

McGonagall cleared her throat and placed the frame back onto the desk, though turned it away so that she could no longer see the face. "I believe Miss Granger that you are going to be late for your patrol if you do not leave soon."

"Yes, Professor," Hermione said, turning away from the desk. She opened the door and then looked back to her teacher. "I apologize if I've offended you."

McGonagall nodded her head quickly, pursing her lips as though she were in great emotional distress.

Hermione walked out of the room and closed the door before turning. She had barely taken a step when she looked up and met, "Malfoy!"

"Hello, Granger," He said. "What did you and your beloved teacher talk about? Some type of sexual disaster? Maybe a transfigured member?"

"I'll transfigure your member if you don't stay away from me," Hermione said, shoving Malfoy out of the way and heading off down the hall.

"Oh, so now what's the reason for this animosity?" Malfoy said catching up to her. "I think that you've built up all of that tension and now you're looking for a way to release it."

"What tension?" Hermione said, turning towards him and stopping. Malfoy stopped with her. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Malfoy took a step forward and reached up as if to brush his finger tips across Hermione's cheek. "You know what tension I'm talking about."

Hermione's eyelids fluttered despite herself, her heart began to pound furiously in her chest and her breaths increased. Malfoy took a step closer, as Hermione took one back. They continued this until Malfoy had Hermione against the wall. He came close to her body, watching with slight satisfaction at the reaction he was getting out of her. Reaching out, he touched her skin, her mudblood skin, surprised at its softness, and then it was like he wasn't himself any more. Hermione's eyes opened and she looked him dead in the eye. "What are you doing?"

"Shut up, Granger," Malfoy said as his mouth neared hers. He placed his hands on either side of her face, holding it in place. Hermione's eyes began to close against her will. Her rational mind was currently in limbo, her heart wanted contact from someone who made her swoon with each touch.

And then his lips touched hers.

It wasn't like with Ron who always seemed hurried. Malfoy didn't attack her mouth and immediately go for tongue action. He kissed her lips once and then pulled away, repositioning his body so that when they touched, they seemed to fit so seamlessly together. Hermione's hands wound around his torso, grasping his shirt tightly in her fists, balling the fabric when he leaned down and kissed her again, this time, harder, more passionate. He held her face tenderly, something that surprised her since all of her visions of him were harsh and uncaring.

But suddenly she thought of Ron waiting for her in her room, of their passions, of their love, even if it was so permanent, so forever. Pulling away, Hermione dropped her hands from Malfoy's body, wiping them furiously on her jeans to try and rid his heat from them. She reached up and wiped her fingers across her lips as Malfoy took a step back, triumphant.

"I told you, Granger," Malfoy said.

"If I get an STD then I'm going to Dumbledore saying that you attacked me," Hermione said.

"How many times do I have to tell you that I don't have STD's, Granger?" Malfoy asked annoyed.

"At least once more, since I'll believe it for the rest of my life," Hermione said as she took off down the hall, wiping at her mouth over and over again. "You taste so disgusting," She said, though she knew that she was lying through her teeth. He tasted far better than Ron ever dreamed of tasting like.

Malfoy's cheeks blushed slightly, an odd feat for his pale skin. "You know you liked it, Granger."

"Yes, just as much as I like worrying about STD's, Malfoy," Hermione called back walking faster towards their dorms.

**A/N: OK, So I want to apologize for the delay. It's not as long as the last time, but you know how that goes. I got the job at Starbucks, so don't be mad if updates really are few and far between! **

**R&R**

**--I've Got Another Confession to Make--**


	6. Confessions of a Deranged Mind

**A/N: For reasons unknown, I feel really bad that my updates are going to be few and far between so I'm updating this next chapter faster than I normally would've! Thanks to all of my lovely reviewers! You make my day and I love you all!**

Chapter Six: Confessions of a Deranged Mind

Hermione Granger was sure of two things right now in her life. One was that her love for Ron was falling back into "Friend" territory and two that her heart was, despite everything she wanted, growing warm towards, dare she say it- no! She couldn't and she wouldn't admit to that! It was just like giving in, and Hermione Granger did not give in if it wasn't necessary. So in replacement for the second, new constant in her life, the second thing that she was sure of was that she was joining the brigade of women against Draco Malfoy, and quite rightly as she was still afraid of contracting an STD.

To be completely honest, it wasn't a choice. In order to live up to the very essence of a feminist, even if it was slight involvement, she just _had_ to be involved. Plus, my God, it was the downfall of _Draco Malfoy!_ She had rights to this! She should have thought of it herself, if she really beat herself over it! Now, Lavender Brown was getting all of the glory and what was she getting? Nothing she was going to admit to, that's for sure!

"Pst!"

Hermione looked around her as Professor Flitwick walked past, the top of his head barely clearing the top of the table. The heads of her peers were bent over their papers, writing as fast as they could across the questionnaire they were filling out for the professor.

Turning back to her paper, Hermione had barely read, "What was your favorite charm this term?" when someone from behind whispered 'pst' again. Hermione ignored the pestering, rereading the question but unable to concentrate.

"Hermione! Turn around!" A female voice said in a harsh whispered.

"What?" Hermione whispered back, her brows furrowed together in anger.

Lavender Brown smiled hurriedly, thrusting a piece of paper out towards the Head Girl, head bent over her paper as if she were still working. Hermione took the paper, hiding it in the palm of her hand before turning quickly round and poising her quill over the blank lines following the question. A drop of ink gathered at the tip of the quill, quivering before it fell and splattered on the parchment.

"Read it!" came Lavender's voice from behind her.

Sighing, Hermione unfolded the crinkled paper, creating a shield with her hand so that Ron couldn't read it from where he sat next to her copying her answers as inconspicuously as he could.

_I saw you last night, Hermione Granger,_ Lavender had written in her loopy scrawl.

Hermione narrowed her eyes, covering the paper when Professor Flitwick passed by again. She skipped the question she was currently unfocused on and answered the next in a haphazard fashion. Shoving her paper towards Ron so that he could copy more easily Hermione uncovered the note from Lavender and scribbled back, _What the hell are you talking about?!_

She stretched, raising her arms and leaning back, dropping the note onto Lavender's desk. Lavender quickly unfolded the note and read Hermione's words, frowning with displeasure at Hermione's lack of cooperation.

_Don't be stupid! I saw you and Malfoy last night!_

Hermione snatched her paper back from Ron as Lavender tossed the note back at her.

Her heart rate increased as she read over the note. Without thought, Hermione looked up and immediately caught sight of Malfoy who was leaning over the desk, scratching at a place on his thigh. How could Lavender know? She was supposed to be against Draco Malfoy, not snogging the enemy.

_Oh, that,_ Hermione began, quickly making up a lie as to what was going through her mind. _I didn't want to say anything because I didn't know if it would get out, but I'm toying with Malfoy to see if we can get any dirty blackmail on him. Don't tell anyone Lavender or else it won't work!_

She had barely passed the note back to Lavender when she was pelted in the back of head with said paper. She turned angrily, catching the attention of Flitwick who had returned to his perch of books.

"Are you alright, Miss Granger?" Flitwick asked leaning forward slightly

Hermione turned towards the professor, feeling the eyes of her peers on her as she mumbled, "Yes, I'm fine." She caught Malfoy's eye, frowning at his impassive stare. Ron nudged her side and she whipped around, scratching at a place behind her ear trying to be all nonchalant. Hermione knocked her paper to the ground. "Oops," she said bending quickly and scooping up the note along with her questionnaire. "What Ron?"

"I need help," he replied giving her a questioning glance. "Are you really OK?"

"Yes, I'm fine, I just- I got in late last night and didn't get much sleep," Hermione said shuffling her papers.

"Oh, listen, about last night," Ron said. "I'm sorry that I wasn't there when you got back. I just had to go back to the common room for some things and then by the time I was done, it was past curfew and I didn't want to get caught."

"Don't worry about it, Ron," Hermione said, shoving her paper for a second time towards him. Ron took it and immediately began to copy the answers.

_That is quite possibly the best idea I have ever heard! This is the ultimate payback to go along with what I already have planned out! I'll keep this between us, but you have to give me weekly updates!_

Hermione nearly gagged with the thought of actually having to _do something_ with Malfoy in order to gain blackmail. Dear sweet Merlin's bum-oley what had she gotten herself into?

**-x-**

"Miss Granger, care to list all the ingredients to an Elemental potion?" Snape inquired as he passed by her desk. Hermione had been sitting as though in catatonic shock having had imagined numerous activities she would have to endure for the sake of all woman-kind. "I know somewhere deep in that thick head of yours you know _all_ of the answers to _everything_ and are waiting to spill it to the rest of the world, thus showing what a pathetic know-it-all you are"

Hermione sighed and swallowed before answering, "I don't know, sir."

The class took a collective breath.

Ron exclaimed, "What?!" His voice ricocheted off of the vaulted dungeon ceilings.

Snape smiled, an eerie sight in and of itself, and continued his walk down the aisle searching for his next victim. Hermione looked down at her lap ashamed. In her mind she said the ingredients half-heartedly: powdered boomslang; essence of dirt; eye of newt; eye jelly of premature hippogriff egg and last, three pinches of the powdered heart of a dragon, the only creature unable of emotion.

She felt the hot prickling sensation of tears behind her eyes and then her vision clouded over. Taking a shaky breath, Hermione looked up, her vision clearing momentarily before clouding again. Ron was copying down the ingredients to the Elemental potion which had appeared on the blackboard at the front of the class, and was pointedly ignoring Hermione, knowing that she was in a state of great emotional distress.

Hermione's breathing hitched in her throat; her heart thumped heavily against her ribs. She felt as though she were having a panic attack. Standing quite suddenly, Hermione nearly knocked over her table before she spouted

"I need to use the ladies, Professor!"

Snape looked up and over at her from where he stood by Malfoy's desk. Both were watching her with intent gazes.

"Why do you need to use the ladies, Miss Granger?" Snape asked.

"Pervert," Ron muttered under his breath.

"Please, Professor," Hermione said, against her will, hot tears fell down her cheeks. First one and then after that it was like a dam had broken and all the H20 in her body was spilling from her eyes. "Please."

It looked as though Snape were having some great emotional conflict. On one hand, he despised watching a woman cry- it was the ultimate torture. On the other hand he wanted to embarrass Hermione Granger so much that she never spoke more than two syllables in his presence. Ever. Again. It was the ultimate dream that he had had every night since she first sat in his class.

"Mr. Malfoy," Snape said, his eyes never leaving the distressed Head Girl. "Escort Miss Granger to the ladies."

"Why?" Malfoy inquired, obviously as surprised as the rest of the class who were now looking between the trio with suspicion.

"Because I said so!" Snape said, his voice low as he rounded on Malfoy, leaning so close to him that Malfoy nearly fell backwards off of his stool.

Lavender was positively beaming when Hermione met her eye, clearing having thought that it had been planned on Hermione's part. The Head Girl stumbled over her stool, yanking her arm away from Ron when he tried to steady her.

"After you, cry baby," Malfoy said, bowing mockingly and extending his arms as though to lead the way.

Hermione shoved him roughly as she passed into the hall. A cough escaped her lips, snot leaked out of her nose and tears fell ten fold down her cheeks.

"Whoa, Granger," Malfoy said, jogging up next to her. "Where are you going in such a hurry?"

"Fuck off," came the harsh reply.

"I love it when you cuss at me," Malfoy replied sending a sidelong smirk her way. Hermione noticed and turned her head away, quickening her pace.

"Please, just leave me alone, Malfoy," Hermione said as he continued to keep pace with her.

"No can do, My Dearest Mudblood," Malfoy said, sighing dramatically and stuffing his hands in his pockets. "You heard ol' Snape. I'm supposed to _escort_ you to the ladies."

"I think that I can make it on my own," Hermione replied.

"Are you sure?" Malfoy asked, his voice changing tone.

Hermione looked over at him. "What are you talking about?"

"I know about you and Weaselbee," Malfoy said in a sing-song voice.

"I have no idea what you mean," Hermione said, stopping in the middle of the hall and crossing her arms over her chest. The skin of her face grew tight as her tears dried.

Malfoy stopped in front of her, rocking towards her and smirking so deeply, Hermione felt like placing a permanent sticking charm to his face. "I know that you don't love him like you say you do."

"Oh, really?" Hermione asked skeptically. "What would give you that idea?"

"I've seen the way you look at him. Like you can't possibly stand to be around him," Malfoy said, his face suddenly serious. "I know that you're repulsed by his touches- I can see it in your eyes."

"You mistake repulsion for passion," Hermione made up, turning on her heel and taking off down the hall towards the bathroom.

Malfoy laughed, his voice echoing off of the stone walls. "You are one hell of a bad liar, Granger! Repulsion for passion? There's no one who's stupid enough to mistake that!"

"Ron is," Hermione stated, never having meant to out loud.

"I hear you," Malfoy said.

"What do you mean, you hear me? I hear you too! I hear a lot of things that I've wished had made me deaf so that I could never hear anything ever again!" Hermione said, her voice rising with emotion.

"I hear you at night when you think that Weasley's asleep and no ones in the common room," Malfoy said. "I've heard you cry."

"That was only a couple of times, and you have no proof that it was about Ron," Hermione whispered.

Malfoy came close to her, so close that he could see the tears that clung to her lashes. "Who else would you cry over?"

"That was a long time ago," Hermione said. "When the year had barely begun."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Malfoy countered. "You probably stayed at Weasley's house and had the same mindset as you do now. Admit it; you don't love him like you did."

Hermione looked up at Malfoy, her mind racing. She thought of Ron, who as far as she knew had always been faithful in their relationship, and she who had already cheated with his sole enemy. She thought of Lavender and the smile on her face as she watched Malfoy and Hermione leave the potions dungeon together. Her mind raced with the thoughts of all the possibilities. Did they realize how easy it was to just kiss someone who wasn't your boyfriend? How easy it was to fall so suddenly out of love with one and in love with another.

"And if I did?" Hermione said, taking a step closer. Her crossed forearms brushed against his chest; it was like static electricity. "What would you do?"

"I don't know," Malfoy said, his head bending so that their noses were almost touching. "What would you _let_ me do?"

It was as though an entity had taken over Hermione's body. She uncrossed her arms slowly, and then fingered the bottom of his tie. Looking up into Malfoy's eyes, she pressed her torso against his, nearing so much so that every breath he took she could feel on her mouth. "Ron couldn't know."

"Know what?" Malfoy breathed.

Just before their lips touched, Hermione took a step back so that Malfoy nearly lost his balance and fell flat on his face. His face was angry as Hermione turned on her heel and walked across the hall and into the girl's bathroom. She breathed a sigh of relief as she leaned on her hands against the white ceramic sink. Looking up into the mirror, she shoved her hair from her face, wiping under her eyes, removing the crust of dried tears.

The door slammed open, bouncing off of the wall. Hermione spun around and met eyes with Malfoy who looked far more livid than she had ever seen him in her life.

"What?" Hermione asked, her voice surprised.

But Malfoy didn't answer. He shoved her roughly against the sink before kissing her roughly. There was a hunger behind his kisses, something that made Hermione paralyzed with wonder. Their eyes were locked on one another until Malfoy changed the pressure of his kiss, easing up and lifting his hands to cradle her head. Hermione's eyes seemed to snap shut as they stood there kissing. She knew that it was wrong, that she was supposed to be slapping the hell out of Malfoy for even thinking about kissing her, especially since she had a boyfriend! Who cared if she didn't love said boyfriend in the ways that she was supposed to? She was still taken! And this was wrong! Wrong, but nicer than any kiss she had ever received from Ron.

My god, where to start with Ron? He was so sweet, so caring at times, and he was funny, always keeping her laughing. But she couldn't talk to him. Mind you, she had never tried talking to Malfoy, but she had a feeling that she would get an opinion from Malfoy, not a "Oh, whatever you think, Love," like she had always received from Ron who would rather just agree than get into an argument that between them could last for the rest of their lives.

Hermione reached up and ran her hands through Malfoy's hair, surprised by what she felt. His hair, notoriously as soft as a baby's bottom was semi-course. There was a fineness to it that allowed it to lie across his forehead in a way that made it appear silky, but once touched his hair was discovered to be rather course, with a little silky undertone.

She lost herself. She put everything into those kisses. She put in her frustration with Ron, her frustrations with Lavender who was dumber than a stick. All the anger she had pent up for the very boy she was kissing. It was far more satisfying to make out than to argue and just grow irritated.

Malfoy moved to her neck, searching for the most sensitive spot and finding it just below her ear. Hermione leaned farther into him, letting her head rest as far back as she could and still be able to breathe. She allowed herself to be taken, allowed Malfoy to touch her body, albeit through her clothes, and kiss her as though he were the one who had the unalienable right. And what could possibly be worse than to do it in return? To touch him in places she was still uneasy to on her own boyfriend. To kiss him without any reserve. Where were her morals? Where were her inhibitions- inhibitions of any kind?

It couldn't have been the way he tasted, for it was like any other person. Maybe it was the way that when he kissed her, he kept her captivated. She didn't think of all the studying she had to complete that night, or maybe that she secretly hoped it didn't lead to love making. No, with him, she actually hoped that they would, that it would be so passionate and far better than anything she had ever experienced.

But then she realized just _why_ it would be so experienced.

Malfoy _was_ experienced.

He had been with God knows how many people. The small and disconcerting fact that he had slept with almost every girl in their year and the three below allowed her the tiny piece of reserve to shove him away, to rob herself of the very one thing that she had wanted for all her life, the very thing that almost every girl dreams of- passion. And maybe not passion in the sense of constant sex that was wild and never ending, but passion that simply made her happy. Passion that completed a person- passion like that in which you received when you did something good for another. It was the passion that you got when you did something right. Passion with another person. Something shared and good and complete. Something that was _done_ with passion.

"What-?" Malfoy began surprised at the sudden turn in events.

"I hope that I wasn't interrupting anything?" A sly female voice said by the door.

Both Hermione and Malfoy turned, thoroughly surprised at their audience.

"Who the fuck are you?" Malfoy said roughly, taking an intimidating step closer to girl. She kept her ground, smirking up at him through thick black lashes. Hermione narrowed her eyes in suspicion. There weren't that many people here in school, and being Head Girl, she knew almost every face, even if she didn't know all of their names.

"Lavender," Hermione stated, her arms crossed over her chest.

"What?" Malfoy said, turning to look at Hermione.

The girl's smirk faltered slightly. She gave Hermione a pleading look behind Malfoy's back. She flipped her long brown hair over her shoulder.

Hermione, thinking fast, walked up to the girl and gave a tug at one of the long locks. It slipped and then with an extra tug came off into Hermione's hands, revealing the shorn hair cut of the newly made monk Lavender Brown. Malfoy's face was incredulous.

"Bitch!" He cried.

Lavender looked helplessly towards Hermione who had turned away and was currently disposing of the wig.

"First posters about me and then you turn to stalking me!" Malfoy screeched his voice full to the brim of emotion. "What the fuck is your problem?!"

"Malfoy," Hermione said calmly. He ignored her.

"I'm sorry, I was just… I-"

"You-You, I-I…" Malfoy mimicked. "Well what is it, Brown?"

Lavender didn't say anything. She squared her shoulders and with a icy glare in Hermione's direction, lavender stalked out of the bathroom.

"Where the hell are you going?" Malfoy called.

"Malfoy!" Hermione said. "I'll take care of Lavender. Just stop."

Malfoy gave Hermione a glare to rival that of Lavender's and then turned and punched a hole in the wooden stall's wall. Hermione turned and then hurried out of the bathroom, running down the hall where she saw Lavender waiting by a statue of Ravenclaw. The other Gryffindor was chewing on her finger nails with frenzy. When she saw Hermione, her face erupted into a smile and she latched onto the front of her robes.

"Hermione that was bloody brilliant! I can't believe that you've gotten so far with Malfoy!" Lavender screeched.

"What about Hermione and Malfoy?" A voice to their left said.

Hermione and Lavender whipped around and met eyes with the infamous Harry Potter.

**A/N:**

**Alright y'all I hope that this is enough to slack your lusts till the next edition comes out! Sorry about the wait! R&R pleaseeeeeeee! It makes my day! And maybe I'll update faster:**


	7. The Truth in the Hands of the Wicked

**A/N: Hey all! Work has been really good actually. The atmosphere of Starbucks is really nice; and the customers are like your friends (which is actually kind of weird) but at least I'm always in a good mood when I'm at work, which is WONDERFUL!!!!!! **

**Thanks to all of my reviewers, especially the faithful ones, like maripas, White-Pink-Fluffy-Strawberriez, and fanfictiongeek36, just to name a few! There are so many others, and I am sincerely grateful for each and EVERY one of y'all! **

Chapter Seven: The Truth in the Hands of the Wicked

Hermione Granger was fucked.

Simple as that. She was going to have to tell Harry everything, including Lavender's "ingenious" plan and then suffer the wrath of what he would do. And it wasn't as though she could just skate around it, telling him parts if it and not the whole truth, because Harry was just too damn smart. He knew when someone was keeping something from him, and damn her if she thought that she could do it to his face.

Lavender was smirking. Smirking as though the gods had bestowed upon her a most wonderful gift, and to Hermione, she guessed that they had. Lavender Brown loved anything that involved someone getting hurt/revealed/punished and this was the crème de la crème of all downfalls. This was far better than even the Death of Draco Malfoy: Resident Minute-Man and Pompous Git.

Harry had crossed his arms and was currently giving Hermione The Death Stare.

"Well," he said in a deep voice that exuded anger. "Aren't you going to explain yourself, Hermione Granger?"

Hermione honestly didn't know how to start, so she told him that, as she felt the hot sensation of tears behind her lids. Her nose became stuffy and made it more difficult to keep the tears at bay.

"From the beginning," Harry replied gruffly, but before Hermione could begin he turned and looked at Lavender. "What are you still doing here?"

Lavender jumped slightly when Harry suddenly turned on her. "I-I… I was just leaving?"

"Then go!" Harry said, his voice carrying down the hall. Hermione jumped slightly as Harry's voice reverberated up against the stone ceilings. His face was tight, angry and two heated, red patches were growing on his cheeks, making his green eyes snap and pop in the dim light.

It was apparent from the look on her face that Lavender had been expecting something a little bit nicer from the infamous Potter, and looked to Hermione for some kind of explanation. The Head Girl shrugged her shoulders, her heart pounding heavily in her chest as she contemplated if the danger in staying in an angry Harry's company would be worth it tomorrow morning. From the look of things, there was really only a couple of choices and all of them involved Hermione running like a chicken to the nearest shelter: AKA the Head's Common Room, a place where Harry was forcefully kept out.

"Bye, Hermione," Lavender mumbled, her brown eyes somber. She reached up as if to grab a lock of hair but reacted as though she hadn't ever known it was gone. As she left down the hall, her right hand caressing her shorn hair, Lavender's face evolved into that of horror as she examined the handiwork of a spiteful woman.

"Is there somewhere else we can go and talk about this?" Hermione asked in a low voice. "Somewhere where we won't be heard?"

Harry narrowed his eyes but assented none the less. They walked in stony silence, Harry slightly ahead so that Hermione knew he was leading her to a place where he assumed there would be privacy. Her heart collided frantically with her ribs, protesting this confrontation. How was she supposed to explain herself? Was she supposed to tell him her feelings? Was she supposed to be completely honest, even when the truth hurt more than anything in the world? Honestly, she was scared of the truth. It held everything inevitably in its hands. Merlin, how was she going to get out of this one?

Hermione was royally fucked.

She was hardly paying attention to where they were going, and was surprised to see that they were standing before an ornate wooden door that led to the Room of Requirement. Harry stormed inside and nearly slammed the door into Hermione as she was walking over the threshold. Hermione turned her back to Harry looking out into the hall. Her eyes met with a set of grey ones, watching her intently from the other side of the hall, his head cocked regally to one side. Hermione lowered her head and shook her head quickly once giving him the hint to just leave things be and go away.

"So, Hermione," Harry said once the door was securely shut and his best friend had turned to face him. "Care to explain?"

"Well…" Hermione began. Oh, sweet Jesus, where to start? "I don't know how to begin. I mean, it wasn't like there is a beginning I think, it just sort of happened."

"What about Ron?" Harry asked quietly.

"I- Harry, I-…"

"Do you _love_ him Hermione?"

"Who?"

Harry gave her a pointed look. "Ron, Hermione, Ron… The guy you're dating."

"Right," Hermione said swallowing thickly. "I, I mean, it's a difficult question."

"Is it now?" Harry asked, his voice oddly calm. He was looking at Hermione with, wait a blooming minute and hold the bloody phone. Was that _PITY?!_ Was Harry Potter looking _at __**her**_ with **PITY?!?! **What the hell was going on?

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Hermione asked suspiciously.

"Hermione, please, answer my question," Harry said, sighing and crossing his arms over his chest. "So do you love Ron or not?"

"Harry…" Hermione said, stamping her foot like a child and blinking fast as tears rushed to her eyes. "Please…"

"I deserve this one piece of honesty, Hermione, since you've left me in the dark about everything else."

Hermione looked at her feet, wiping the back of her hand angrily under her nose. Harry looked at her expectantly as though he already knew the answer, just needed to hear it from her mouth. He needed to know.

"Yes," she replied heavily, exhaling as though she had just held her breath under water for more than a minute.

"What?!" Harry exclaimed. "I thought that… I mean, Ron said that-… Well, I mean, I just though that your relationship was on the rocks…"

"It is?" Hermione asked levelly. Why would her relationship with Ron be on testy waters? They were supposed to live happily ever after… Right?

"What was this about Malfoy?" Harry supplied quickly. "You still need to explain that, by the way. Why the hell would you even be thinking of doing anything with Malfoy? He probably has STD's you know…" Harry trailed off looking about the room as if an answer would be supplied within the walls, inscribed on a bookshelf, something or anything.

"Malfoy, is… Difficult to explain," Hermione said softly, shaking her head and sitting on the floor across from Harry. "I mean, it started on a bet, really. Lavender wanted to get back at him for what he did to her, and that of what he has done to the female population in this school. And then it became a bet to see if he could- well, that really doesn't matter… Harry, there's nothing really to say because there's nothing there! Honest!"

Harry nodded his head and crossed his legs Indian style, resting his forearms against his knees. "Hermione, there's something about Ron that you need to know."

"OK," Hermione said softly, her brow creasing in worry. "What's the matter? Is he hurt or something?"

"No, nothing like that… But, well, haven't you noticed anything different about him lately?" Harry asked giving her a pathetic pity look.

"Well," Hermione began. "I don't know… He doesn't really hang around very often. All we really do is-"

"What?" Harry said when Hermione quickly stopped and a slight blush covering her cheeks. "All you really do is what?"

"Nothing much," Hermione said, picking at the hem of her skirt.

"Ron's already told me about… you two…" Harry said though he refused to meet her eye.

"He has?!" Hermione exclaimed, slightly hurt that Ron has shared something so personal with Harry.

"Yes," Harry said finally looking back up at her through his lashes. "In great detail."

Hermione felt faint. So now Harry has a basic view of what Ron and hers sexual relationship was like and also that she has been consorting with the enemy.

"Hermione, you need to talk to Ron," Harry said in a mothering kind of tone. "You need to know."

"Know what?!" Hermione said loudly.

"Maybe what you're doing with Malfoy, whatever it is, isn't quite as wrong as you think it is…" Harry replied evasively.

"Oh, so now cheating on my boyfriend is _OK_?" Hermione stood shakily to her feet. "What is wrong with you? Are you on some kind of medication that I need to know about?"

"Hermione, just go, before it's too late and you're the one who gets hurt," Harry said quickly, as he stood. He walked across the room and opened the door. "Bye, Hermione," Harry said softly before he turned tail and walked away down the hall.

Hermione followed slightly apprehensive. She stepped out of the room and closed the door, watching as it melted back into stone, blending in with the area surrounding it. Harry's form was etched in darkness, his head down as though he were sad.

What was happening to her life? She was supposed to go and be happy with Ron, but what was this that Harry was talking about? Her life was just one confusing bit after another, spiraling out of control, spinning faster and faster and she was just tumbling along with it, unable to stop.

"Hey," A voice said behind her. Hermione whipped around, her heart calming when she met his eyes.

"Malfoy," She said softly. "What do you want?"

"Did Potter tell you?" He counter-asked.

"What? Tell me what? And how the hell would _you_ know what Harry wants to tell me?" Hermione asked, her anger coming back tenfold.

"Because I was there when he found out," Malfoy said in an even voice. "We were fighting, like we always do, and we stumbled across them…"

"Them?" Hermione whispered. In her heart she felt as though she knew. There were changes in Ron that though subtle, she had seen, and felt. His love making had changed; it had become more experienced. He did things that only an experienced lover would know, things that Hermione found disconcerting and made her wonder. How would someone who was _supposedly_ a virgin know how to do those things, and do them so deftly with skill? Virgins were awkward in things that they had just learned.

"I'll show you, if you like…" Malfoy said, extending his hand.

"Show me what?" Hermione whispered.

"Weasley's secret," Malfoy replied softly, extending his hand even farther, an open invitation. Hermione looked at it with slight trepidation, her fingers twitching slightly with the thought.

**-x-**

His hand was soft and warm and encased her own completely. Hermione couldn't believe what she was doing. She was walking down the hall not only with Malfoy, but she was _holding his __**hand.**_ Murder her. Seriously.

Malfoy turned and looked back at her as they walked down the hall. Hermione looked away, down beyond the dark hall towards what, she wasn't quite certain, but it made her stomach flutter with butterflies and her heart spasm in her chest.

"Are you sure that you want to see this?" Malfoy asked, turning away and stopping before a classroom door.

Hermione nodded her head slowly, still avoiding his eye.

"Granger," Malfoy said softly. Hermione finally looked into his grey irises, her heart fluttering and doing somersaults painfully. He licked his lips before nodding his head and dropping her hand and stepping back away.

It felt like someone had stabbed her in the heart and was waiting, waiting, waiting for the most painful moment to twist and pull it back out. Her lungs contracted making it difficult to breathe; her diaphragm seemed to forget how to move.

Moving slowly, Hermione neared the door, squeezing her eyes shut tightly. Harry's face of pity kept swimming before her, his sad green eyes and the way he had refused to tell her everything that was going on. Malfoy coughed from somewhere behind her and Hermione turned suddenly to look at him, giving him a look of death when he smirked and motioned for her to get going.

"Don't rush me!" Hermione harshly whispered. Malfoy shook his head and replied, "If you don't move your ass you won't see it!"

Turning back to the door Hermione gripped the cold door handle and pressed her ear against the warm wooden door. On the other side were strange noises, something like she'd heard when she walked in on Malfoy or when he and some girl decided to hole themselves up in his room for hours upon hours as though they were newlyweds on their honeymoon. Hermione pulled away and looked back at Malfoy.

"I don't want to see some couple going at it," Hermione stated, moving away.

"No," Malfoy said, turning her around so that she faced the door. "This is something different. This is something that you _need_ to see, something that will change your entire outlook…"

"And what if I don't want to?" Hermione asked staring at the door with trepidation. She knew what lay beyond that door, but she was more than willing to play dumb and live with the knowledge that she knew what he was doing, but that she didn't know who it was. That way, she could never hate her… She would just be able to hate herself, for never having done anything about it.

"Do it, Granger," Malfoy whispered, his mouth incredibly close to her ear. Hermione swallowed heavily again and then took the metal doorknob in her hand, squeezing it as though it would be the lifeline to keep her from looking into that room. She was contemplating the exact dangers of opening the door, when Malfoy stepped up behind her, pressing his front completely against her back and covering her hand with his, quietly and slowly turning the knob to open the door.

"Don't," Hermione whispered. "I'm not ready."

"Granger," Malfoy said, his hot breath tickling her ear. "You'll never be ready unless you just take a chance." He eased the door open and a warm yellowy light washed over the both of them. Hermione shut her eyes quickly as a sliver of the room came into view. "Open your eyes, Hermione, and look," Malfoy whispered placing his left hand on her hip. Slowly, Hermione opened her eyes and instantly wished that she hadn't.

It was as though that knife in her chest was being twisted and twisted, painfully pulling at her veins connected to her heart and pulling them excruciatingly, slowly apart. Malfoy's hand was playing with the fabric of her skirt, but that was only registered somewhere in the back of her mind. The only thing she could see was _them_.

How could he do this to her? How? She had never in her entire life done anything to deserve this, nothing. She was loyal, she was a good listener, my god she let him do practically whatever he wanted without raising a fuss! And then it hit her. She never said anything about what he did. She never once made a big deal out of anything, never really complimented him on something.

In a way, she assumed that she deserved this.

This pain… This betrayal…

She was to wear it upon her sleeve, the ultimate deception, and let everyone know that what had happened had been a part of her own fault. She deserved this.

And it hurt more to see it with her own eyes.

If someone had come up to her and told her what was happening, she might have believed them. Hermione might have even confronted Ron and let him tell her with his own words. But to see it… To see something so painful… It was far more convincing.

"Do you see now, Hermione?" Malfoy whispered, resting his face next to hers so that their cheeks were touching. From the corner of her eye she could see his nose and the crests of his lips. She could see his eyelashes, and just slightly beyond that, she could see the grey bubble that was his eye, watching the scene before them. "Don't be mad at Harry, or at me… We just wanted you to know. You deserved to know."

Hermione's vision clouded over, though she didn't let a tear fall. She wanted to see everything that way later on when she confronted him, he wouldn't be able to worm his way out. He wouldn't be able to say that it was someone else screwing a girl on a desk in the fourth floor corridor.

Her body went numb but for the feeling of Malfoy on her. She couldn't feel her left hand which hung limp at her side, or her feet which kept her standing. She couldn't feel hardly anything, but for Malfoy's body pressed firmly against her own and the feeling of his hand on hers which were both grasping the doorknob.

"Do you hate me?" Malfoy asked, glancing at her through the corner of his eye.

Hermione remained quiet for a moment. Her eyes drained of any moisture and she had to blink rapidly for a moment in order to compensate the itchy dry feeling that overcame them.

"No," Hermione answered after a moment, her eyes still glued to the adulterous couple. There was an intense feeling for the need to murder.

She'd show him. She'd let him know what happens to a woman when scorned.

Hermione blinked and then closed the door suddenly. Malfoy stepped back and a coldness ran over her body, shocking her from her murderous glare. Turning, Hermione looked at Malfoy and said "Thank you."

Malfoy blinked and then said "You're welcome" though his voice sounded a little unsure. He watched as Hermione nodded her head and then took off down the hall towards Gryffindor Tower.

**-x-**

Initially Ron Weasley wasn't one for cheating. But there was something different about Hermione that made him just want to. Not to mention the fact that he was still a little sore over her response to his "I love you." She really should be happy that he had even been able to mutter the words. Not many men would have even thought about doing that, let alone having said it and to her face _while_ she was conscious.

Muttering the password to the Fat Lady, Ron stumbled into the common room, cursing when he nearly fell flat on his face.

He muttered his way into the room and then stopped. Hermione was standing in front of the boy's staircase with the look to kill on her face.

"Hermione," Ron started, plastering a smile on his lips. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I was just walking through the halls tonight and then realized that I hadn't seen you in a while," Hermione said, smiling manically. "Did you have fun?"

"Fun?" Ron said, laughing nervously. "What do you mean?"

Hermione crossed her arms tightly across her chest and took a couple of steps closer to her. "I mean, did you have fun with Susan Bones?"

Ron's face fell. "How did-?"

"Oh, that doesn't really matter," Hermione interrupted. Her face hardened. "I hate you Ron. I really do. What did I ever do to deserve this?"

"Maybe it's what you didn't do, Hermione," Ron said. Hermione was about to answer but Ron didn't let her, instead choosing to walk away. He shoved past her and hurriedly ran up the stairs to his dormitory, closing the door on perhaps the only person who would take him for who he was; the only person who would accept him, the good, the bad and the ugly.

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**A/N: Hey guys! I'm sick so I'm writing like crazy. Though I must say that I'm not too happy with the way this turned out. Also, If this sounds pretty random at times it's because I was writing when I had a sinus headache. **

**Please review and tell me if you hate it or not. This was supposed to happen though maybe not for a couple more chapters… but oh, well, at least it's out there.**

**--I've Got Another Confession to Make--**


	8. True Love is the Rebound Object

**A/N: Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your reviews! They mean the world to me! They really do… Is that strange? Oh, well, I really don't care if it's strange or not. **

**Well I'm happy that at least ONE person noticed Hermione's hypocritical ways! And if you didn't, than now you know. Here's the next bit! Hope you like it! **

Chapter Eight: The Rebound Object can be True Love

"Miss Granger, are you sure that you haven't seen Mr. Malfoy?" McGonagall asked for the twentieth time as Hermione and Madame Pomphrey looked over at her with tired eyes.

"No m'am." Hermione replied as she shifted in her chair and crossed her legs exhaling a heavy sigh as she did so.

It was detention and so far Malfoy hadn't shown up or even sent a note saying why he was what he would consider "unavoidably" detained. Pomphrey sighed and took out her wand conjuring up a pot of tea and a plate of scones. She levitated it closer to herself and served herself before placing it on McGonagall's desk between Hermione and McGonagall.

Hermione took a cup and allowed McGonagall to serve her before settling back into her chair and taking an angry bite out of the buttery scone. She was still a bit miffed about Ron and she couldn't help but keep seeing him and Susan Bones going at it like rabbits. It hurt, yes, but that night when Hermione had gone to bed her tears hadn't been one of pain and rejection. They had been for herself and the fact that she should have done it first. Ron had loved her, but not she him and she felt that maybe it would have been more fair if she had been the one to do it. Then maybe Ron would've understood that Hermione had feelings as well and that cheating on her didn't make things any easier/better.

_Stupid git,_ Hermione thought as she stuffed the rest of her scone into her mouth.

Professor McGonagall slurped loudly from her cup, her eyes transfixed on the door as though imagining Malfoy walking through it. Pomphrey was sitting on the little folding table, her head resting on the wall behind her and snoozing lightly as her cup of tea sat precariously on its little saucer.

Preparing to do the same as the old nurse, Hermione had just gotten herself comfortable in her seat when the door was banged open and a boy no older than thirteen came in with a smug look on his face and a quill and pad of paper in his hands.

"Who are you?" McGonagall asked gruffly, her brow creasing indignantly.

Madame Pomphrey had been startled awake and tossed her arms up with surprise, the forgotten tea cup flying threw the air where it fell, and lie shattered on the ground.

"I'm Mr. Malfoy's substitute," the boy replied making himself comfortable in Malfoy's seat and giving Hermione a withering glance. Hermione shifted her weight, quite scandalized that this _boy_ thought that he could look at her as though she were some piece of dirt.

"You're _what_?" McGonagall asked as though she couldn't believe her ears. She blinked slowly as if waking from a deep sleep and was still unsure if she were dreaming or not.

"Mr. Malfoy's substitute," The boy repeated looking slightly put out that McGonagall wasn't listening to him.

"Preston, you need to tell me where Mr. Malfoy is," McGonagall said in her most threatening voice.

Preston's smug demeanor vanished in a millisecond as he sank into his chair ashamed.

"He never actually said where he was going," Preston replied in a small voice. "He just gave me some money and told me to take notes for his detention, here in your office. But he did say that it was a personal matter."

Oh, Hermione knew what kind of personal matter this was. He had a "date" with some unfortunate soul who was about to learn that Draco Malfoy was a cold-hearted bastard. And it seemed apparent that McGonagall was thinking along the same lines.

"Mr. Preston, you may return to your dormitories. Miss Granger I would like it if you also would return and inform me the moment Mr. Malfoy returns to the Head's commons," McGonagall stood as did the other three occupants. "Poppy, I believe that we have some searching to do."

Madame Pomphrey looked particularly keen on the idea of looking for any illicit liaisons happening beneath their very noses and positively bounded from the office. McGonagall grabbed Hermione's upper arm and shoved both her and Preston from the office before locking the door and hurrying off down the hall towards Madame Pomphrey who was already turning the corner one hundred feet away.

"Did Malfoy really not say where he was going?" Hermione asked turning on the boy.

"What does it matter to you?" Preston answered instead as he too took off leaving Hermione alone in the stone corridor.

Although Hermione was Head Girl and could send that boy to detention faster than he could say "I have a crazy cat in my pants" in Spanish three times fast, she refrained having always said that she would never abuse her power. That was Malfoy's job. Hermione crossed her arms resolutely and spun on her heel bypassing McGonagall's office the opposite way and taking the long way up to the Head's Common Room.

The portrait was empty when Hermione came upon it ten minutes later. She sat underneath it and pulled her knees up to her chest, waiting for the painted man to come back. A couple of Hufflepuff girls sidled past, whispering and glancing at her in that way that told you immediately you were the source of their conversation. They laughed mirthlessly as the turned the corner and disappeared from sight. Hermione sighed and wrapped her arms about her knees, pressing her closed lids tightly together so that no light penetrated. The hall was oddly quiet; the only sounds were that of her own breathing. Hermione relaxed and pressed her eyes into her knees, her fingers lying splayed around her shoe laces.

Everything was deathly quiet for a moment and Hermione could have sworn that she was drifting off into some catatonic state that resembled sleep when something warm and very heavy fell across her slumped form, squishing her unpleasantly on the ground. She tried to call out but right as said object had fell across her, she had been exhaling and couldn't quite breathe in again.

"Ugh…" a voice moaned from over her. A _very_ familiar voice.

"Malfoy…" Hermione wheezed, her knees pressing into her chest. "Get… _Off!_"

Malfoy's body slumped off of Hermione as she wiggled around and he moaned again, quite pathetically might she add. Hermione whipped around ready to give him a tongue lashing for not showing up for detention but when she looked at his face, she found that she simply couldn't.

It was long and deep, cutting across his cheek and jaw like an angry slash, marring the once perfect skin. Scarlet blood oozed onto the floor and as Hermione knelt on the ground she found another and another all over his person.

"Who did this to you?" Hermione whispered as she took out her wand and used her minimal knowledge of medicine to stop the bleeding.

Malfoy groaned again and a spurt of blood squirted from the gash on his cheek and painted itself onto Hermione's white t-shirt.

"God, Malfoy," Hermione said as she looked around anxiously.

"My goodness what happened?" A airy, female voice said from above her.

Hermione looked up at the portrait and quickly said the password. The portrait reluctantly swung open as Hermione hoisted Malfoy as best she could over the threshold. She had to pause in the entrance way but succeeded in dragging him across the common room to the bathroom with only slight groans of pain from Malfoy.

"Hermione…" Malfoy gurgled. "It hurts…"

"Shut up, Malfoy," Hermione said gruffly as she let him lay on the floor and stood up to find something- anything- to stop the bleeding and patch him up. "You're only making it worse."

"Granger…" He said anyway, tossing his head rather dramatically to the side and looking at her through his lashes. "There's a book in my room… On medicine."

Hermione didn't need telling twice. She bounded from the bathroom and up the stairs to the second floor. However, she couldn't help but pause in front of his door afraid to touch the handle. "Merlin, please don't let me get STD's and if I do I pray that Malfoy gets a permanent rash in his nether regions for doing this to me," Hermione muttered as she shoved the door open and stepped into his room. It was a pigsty. There were clothes EVERYWHERE and the bed sheets were hanging off of one side in a crumbled mess.

Malfoy would most likely die from lack of blood before Hermione found the book.

"Holy shit…" Hermione muttered as she began tossing clothes everywhere. Eventually she came across a pile of books in the middle of the floor and picked up as many as she could and ran from the room. Malfoy was groaning and moving his legs about in jerky movements as though his upper half were paralyzed.

Dropping the books to the ground, Hermione proceeded to hold them up one by one as Malfoy shook his head "yes" or "no" till she found the right one bound in red leather with gold lettering down the spine. Hermione flipped open the cover and scanned the index with her pointer finger. "Where the bloody hell is it?"

Malfoy's face was paler than pale and Hermione could see the tiny blue veins beneath his skin. She turned back to the book and found a spell that looked as though it could be correct. Flipping to the correct page she recited the incantation once in her head and then took out her wand, pointing it at Malfoy before repeating the spell again out loud.

At first it appeared as though nothing were happening. Then his face and hands began to turn a pinkish color and the long gash on his cheek sewed itself back up leaving behind a thing scar the length of Hermione's palm. Tears of relief sprung into her eyes and she flung herself across him.

"Took you long enough, Granger!" Malfoy said, a bit surprised that Hermione was lying across him and so willingly. "Next time I'll just _die_!"

Hermione sat up and slapped him across the face. "You arrogant bastard! I saved your life and all you can say is 'took you long enough'?! Next time I _will_ let you die! You deserve it-"

And then Malfoy kissed her.

Her mind went blank. She forgot about telling McGonagall that Malfoy had returned to their room. She forgot all about Preston and how he had sent another person to serve his detention. All she could focus on was kissing him and the feel of his mouth on hers.

Malfoy pushed her back on the ground and lay atop her, never once breaking contact as he deepened their kiss. Hermione moaned slightly and wrapped her arms tightly about his neck, pulling him closer. She completely lost herself, giving everything, once again, into these kisses. Malfoy just had that effect on her. He made her want to let loose, and in order for Hermione to let loose she had to be completely free of any other emotion. So she poured her frustration, her rejection and even her hypocrisy into those kisses, relishing in the way it felt to push them from her body and onto someone else. Her pain was no longer her problem.

Or so she thought.

They were going at it, kissing one another and pulling off each others clothes like they were new lovers, which when Hermione thought about, they were, and totally engrossed in their actions that neither of them noticed their audience consisting of one enraged ex.

"Ahem."

Hermione broke away from Malfoy's mouth quick as lightening, looking up met eyes with Ron.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Malfoy spat still lying on top of Hermione.

"I was _going_ to talk to Hermione," Ron said looking only at the Head Girl. "But I really don't think she has the time to spare."

"No, Ron!" Hermione said as he walked from the bathroom. Shoving Malfoy off of her, she picked up the first shirt she saw and shoved her arms into it. "Wait!"

Hermione flat out ran across the common room, but Ron was much faster seeing as to how his legs were so much longer. He slammed the portrait shut, nearly hitting Hermione in the face.

"Granger! Just leave him!" Malfoy called from the bathroom doorway. Hermione ignored him, instead fumbling with the handle and literally falling out of it when it gave way so easily.

"Ron!" Hermione called as she sprinted down the corridor, holding the shirt front closed around her exposed chest. "Ron, please wait!"

Whipping around, Ron spat, "Am I so easily forgettable?"

Hermione came to a sudden stop before him, her eyebrows creased with confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"I know that you never loved me Hermione, but I never knew that you were a slut!" Ron screamed at her, catching the attention of fellow passerby. "You could have had a bit more propriety and actually waited, oh, I don't know, a _day_ at least before you went off fucking someone else! Christ, Hermione, you act like you never even cared at all!"

"I never cared?" Hermione fumed, finding herself torn with anger. "I never cared? Never once in our relationship, no matter how I felt, I _never, __**never**_once cheated on you! I may not have loved you but I would never have stooped as low as to screw another behind your back like you did!"

"How do I know that you didn't?" Ron countered. "You obviously have had some prior encounter with _him_ by the way you were touching and kissing him in your bathroom. You never once did that with me!"

"I never wanted you!" Hermione screamed. "You repulsed me! You weren't a lover but a typical man! Horny as ever and then once you had what you wanted you were out of there as though it were the better solution to jacking off!"

"Maybe you were at one point," Ron whispered, grabbing her upper arms and pulling her close so that the people who had congregated about them had to lean in to hear them. "But now that I think about it, I wish that I had jacked off instead of fucked you. It was one of the worst experiences in my life, having to stay there with you after I fucked you."

_Slap!_

The action rang throughout the hall, and a couple of spectators jumped with surprise.

Ron's eyes were wide and angry as he looked back at Hermione. Her hand was still stinging red on his cheek, the finger outlines fading slightly to a dull pink. His hands increased in pressure till it was all Hermione could do not to cry out in pain. And then he threw her away from him, watching as she stumbled and fell slightly but was caught by someone else.

"Be a ferret's whore," Ron said as Malfoy steadied Hermione. "It's the only thing you'll ever be good for."

And with that Ron stalked down the hall, shoving aside the ring of their peers. Hermione yanked herself free of Malfoy and bit her lip roughly to keep from crying. And then she turned and fell sobbing into Malfoy's arms as the crowd buzzed with excitement and dispersed to tell their friends what they had just seen.

"I hate you, Malfoy," Hermione whispered as she grabbed a handful of his blond locks and planted a kiss square on his lips.

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**A/N: Yay! The long awaited sequence to this Dramione saga has finally been updated! **

**Sorry about the wait… Been incredibly busy with work and all that jazz! **

**OK, so Hermione is incredibly confused FYI. So this chapter is confusing and a bit sporadic but don't give a review that states the obvious. Believe I know. I made it that way. But please give me criticism. It helps to get the though process for the next chapters going!**

**-I've Got Another Confession to Make-**


	9. A Love So

Chapter Nine: A Love So Pure… A Love So Forbidden… A Love So Tainted…

"I just don't understand why you didn't do as I said and come and tell me the moment Mr. Malfoy arrived back at your dormitories," McGonagall stated, rubbing a tired hand over her forehead. She leaned back in her chair and fixed Hermione with a worn glare. "I don't understand you anymore, Miss Granger. It used to be that you would do anything to see the downfall of Mr. Malfoy but it would seem as though you've had a change of… _heart_."

"I'm sorry professor," Hermione said, bending her head in shame. "I'd fallen asleep last night and didn't hear him come in. I would have come straight to you had it been that I'd known."

McGonagall seemed to be in disbelief. She shook her head and scoffed slightly, but didn't say anything. "I've decided to annul your detentions, Miss Granger."

"What?" Hermione asked with surprise. "Why?"

"I don't see a point in it anymore to be honest," McGonagall said, sitting up and taking a quill in her hand. "You and Mr. Malfoy will always do as you please no matter how much Madame Pomphrey and I attempt to scare you. I just hope that things will work out OK for the both of you and that neither of you will make the wrong mistakes."

Hermione nodded her head in agreement. Her mind was in a jumble. First there was her and Ron and second her and Malfoy and now McGonagall was acting as though Hermione was a different person, a lost cause, if you will. Her heart was in turmoil. Her life was spiraling into disaster and everything was out of her control. She felt helpless in her own fate… She felt helpless in her own emotions.

She didn't want to love him. She didn't want to _fall_ in love with him.

But it would seem as though it were what the fates had destined for her.

Hermione left McGonagall's office when the older woman waved her hand in dismissal and walked the corridors aimlessly. She wandered through the halls bypassing her peers as though she were a walking zombie. Never speaking, never even looking at the people around her; she merely walked and walked, her mind chock full of thoughts. Thoughts so forbidden.

It seemed pathetic to her, the way a girl would act over a boy. How they would fawn and preen themselves as though he were The One. And now… Hermione did the same thing. Every morning she smoothed her hair so that it fell in ringlets, soft and manageable. Her clothes were pristine, her shoes buffed of any and all scratches. As petty as it was, she wanted him to notice her and that she wasn't one to be fooled around with. She was a woman who knew what she wanted and wanted to prove to him that she could be just as good as any Pureblood.

And now as she walked through the corridors, she didn't see Malfoy and any other girl making love in the depths of the school. She imagined it was herself in their place. She wanted to be the one who felt his hands on her skin; his lips on her lips; him inside of her.

She was falling hard and she was falling fast and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

Her heart swelled with the thought of what could be.

Falling was the worst part of love. Falling was often unreciprocated. Falling was, in and of itself, the very act of… love…

**-x-**

Hermione found herself in the Astronomy Tower, surprised with where her feet had led her while her mind had been so preoccupied. Crossing her arms, Hermione rubbed her hands quickly over her exposed upper arms and looked out across the lawns. The air was cold and had the feeling of snow on it, heavy as though carrying an even heavier burden. Hermione felt as though she could readily associate with it.

Sighing, Hermione leaned against the little half wall where there was an open window and looked down at the lawns. The grass was shiny, as though there were a layer of ice on it as her peers laughed and stood in little cliques, spotted on the lawn. And Hermione looked down at them, feeling like the God of her own little world; angry that she couldn't really be a part of them and jealous because she felt they, the female half, had a piece of something she never would.

"What are you doing, all alone, up here, Granger?" A voice said from behind her. Hermione tensed but refused to turn at the sound of Malfoy's voice. "Shouldn't you be patrolling like McGonagall would want?"

"Piss off, Malfoy," Hermione said, though in her heart, she knew it wasn't what she wanted.

Malfoy didn't go away. Instead he came and stood beside Hermione, who straightened her back like a board when she felt his presence beside her. "I'm assuming McGonagall told you the blessed news?"

"Yes," Hermione answered, looking away so that she couldn't see his body just inside her peripheral vision. Briefly she wondered why Malfoy was making small talk with her, or maybe how it was that he had known, if at all, to come and find her in the Astronomy Tower.

Hermione shuddered slightly when Malfoy's arm brushed against her own, his bare skin touching her own eliciting the very emotion she was attempting to suppress. She rubbed her hand slowly over the spot, over and over, trying to smooth the goose bumps that had sprouted across her arm. And then she felt his fingers on her hip, playing with the hem of her shirt, the heat of his body hitting her back as he neared her.

The tip of his nose touched her shoulder, moving up towards her neck as his free hand moved her hair away. Hermione nearly fell beside herself when she felt his lips brush her skin. His hand on her hip moved across her lower abdomen, trailing close to the top of her jeans before rising up underneath her shirt. "Malfoy…" Hermione whispered as her head leaned back onto his shoulder. His lips touched her jaw, kissing her skin lightly.

"Yes, Granger?" Malfoy whispered, his breath fanning across her ear. He pressed the front of his body completely against her back, as he repeatedly kissed her skin. "What is it that you want?"

For a moment, Hermione couldn't answer. Her mouth and her brain weren't one as her pent up passions for Malfoy increased ten fold. A sudden vision of herself and him making love only further inhibited the action of speech. Malfoy's hands pressed against Hermione's stomach, the tips of his fingers massaging his way into the hem of her jeans, playing with the button at the top till it popped open.

"Malfoy…" Hermione said again, turning towards him so that he had to move his hands on her back to keep them from being twisted painfully. "Quit teasing me."

Malfoy suddenly pushed Hermione against the wall, pressing his body against her own. Hermione looked into his grey irises, her breaths short and erratic.

"And if I want to tease you?" Malfoy whispered, leaning in and nipping at her neck. "Then what are you going to do about it?"

Hermione didn't answer. She didn't know what to say. Malfoy took a step back and with eyes locked on Hermione's began to unbutton her shirt, pausing slightly when he reached her breasts, to kiss the tops of each, and then up her chest to her neck. Hermione's eyelids fluttered closed; Malfoy's hands caressed her skin; Malfoy's lips touched her lips, caressing them with his own.

Reaching out, Hermione took the hem of his t-shirt and pulled it up over his head as Malfoy finished the last three buttons of her own shirt and eased it off over her shoulders where it fell on the floor in a crumbled heap. Hermione wished in the back of her mind that she had worn her black lace bra she had gotten from her mother for her last birthday instead of the plain white one that merely strapped her in. Malfoy smirked when he looked at it, laughing slightly when he caught Hermione's glare.

"Don't worry, Granger," he said softly, nearing her and pressing his bare chest against her torso. "I would've been more surprised if it were anything lacey…"

And then he kissed her, cupping her face in his hands as he continued to kiss her and pressed himself as close to her as he could.

Hermione felt him against her, actually felt his body against her own so unlike how it had been with Ron. She felt a warmth flare in her lower abdomen when she felt his erection, pleased that she was able to draw such emotions from him. She didn't think that maybe it was because he was male and the thought of shagging a girl was far sexier than the way she looked at the moment. Hermione put something into that kiss that even she couldn't really explain. Even though she had already been with another person, she felt as though she had been thrust back into virginity and the things that she were doing were brand new, never done before, that she was unsure would please her lover.

"Granger," Malfoy moaned as he wrapped his arms around her and turned so that he could lay her on the ground. Hermione looked up at him as he knelled on the ground before her and began to pull down her jeans. Her heart thudded faster as she watched Malfoy toss her jeans aside and slide over on top of her. Her breaths became long and slow, her mind, blissfully blank when he kissed her.

She was close to loosing it when Malfoy pulled away suddenly, his eyes alight with something Hermione couldn't describe. Hermione didn't say anything when he stood, and remained quiet still when he pulled his shirt back over his head and buttoned his pants. Embarrassment settled over her like a blanket when she fully encompassed what it was that she had been doing and with whom. Embarrassment for herself and for him. He would always be ashamed of her… of what he had almost done, Hermione was sure of it deep inside her heart. And that's what made this so hard. She could live with loving him and knowing that what he had done in the past wasn't right, but knowing that in some small way, that maybe she could change who he was and what he had done. He couldn't though, and she knew it.

Malfoy stood there for a moment, his brow creased in confusion, or maybe thought. Then he knelled and scooped up Hermione's shirt and then her jeans before tossing them to her. Hermione bit her lower lip when they hit against her side, refusing to believe that this was really happening.

"Get dressed, Granger," Malfoy said softly, turning away and looking out of the window that Hermione had first been standing at.

Holding back tears of rejection, Hermione angrily pulled her jeans up over her legs, buttoning them harshly and nearly ripping off her thumb nail in the process. "Fuck!" Hermione whispered harshly, cradling her hand against her stomach as she sat on the ground. She saw Malfoy's head turn slightly, as if to see what had happened, but not wanting to show too much interest. Angry, hurt and confused, Hermione shoved her arms into her shirt and hastily buttoned them, missing a few and not caring.

Standing, Hermione made to leave, to show him that she wasn't one to just fall at his feet and _beg_. But she stopped at the door and turned back to him, her mouth speaking before her mind rationalized the situation.

"What the fuck is your problem?" Hermione said her voice slightly shrill and echoing off of the stone walls of the Astronomy Tower.

Malfoy turned and looked at her, his head cocked to one side as though saying, "Are you _really_ doing this?" He took a couple of steps forward, sauntering almost.

"What do you mean what's _my_ problem?" Malfoy said softly, his demeanor cool, his posture that of something Hermione was used to seeing; condescending. "Did you not pause to think that maybe it was _yourself_ who was a fault?"

It felt as though Hermione were hit with a ton of bricks. Never before had she been told that she was bad at anything! She was Hermione fucking Granger for Merlin's sake! Scoffing, Hermione turned, training her lower lip between her top and bottom rows of teeth.

"Wait, I didn't mean that," Malfoy said turning away again. He looked as though he were in conflict with himself. As though he were trying to separate what he was truly feeling and what he was supposed to feel. "Merlin, what is happening to me?"

Hermione crossed her arms tightly over her chest. "Why are you acting like this, Malfoy?"

This time Malfoy scoffed. "Why should I tell you, Granger? It's not as though we're friends or anything of the sort. All we are is two people who just happen to be stuck in the same predicament."

"And what would that be?" Hermione asked, turning fully to face him again.

"Don't make me state the obvious, Granger," Malfoy said. "Don't make me say what I know you feel for me too. This was supposed to be a bet. A bet that I could seduce you and in the end…" Malfoy drifted off. He walked over to the wall and sat, pressing his face into his knees.

Hermione felt weak at the knees. Maybe, just maybe, he loved her too! Obviously what love they felt for each other was mere attraction seeing as to how the most she knew about him was that he was a sex addict with a gorgeous body, but that didn't matter at the moment! He _maybe_ loved her too, and dear Merlin, that made Hermione almost leap for joy.

"In the end… What?" Hermione said taking a step forward. Malfoy raised his head, his eyes slightly pink from having pressed them so hard into his knees. His face was passive. He stood slowly from his spot on the ground and walked towards Hermione, who stood her ground and looked up into his eyes with hope.

Malfoy cupped her face in his hands when he reached her. He traced his thumbs over her lips. "Don't make me say it. Please don't make me say it, Hermione," Malfoy whispered before kissing her softly. "I can't…"

"But why?" Hermione whispered back against his lips, her hands around his neck and gripping his hair in both of her fists. "Why is it so hard?"

"You know that this is forbidden, Hermione," Malfoy answered, kissing her lips again to keep her from speaking. "You know what would happen if it were to get out. I can't say it. You can always deny what you haven't said, and you can't argue with that!"

Hermione didn't speak. Her mind was reeling. She was certain that he loved her, but how much she couldn't tell. He couldn't even say "I love you" to her as though he truly meant it. But what he was saying did make sense… If anyone were to find out, if _this_ were to get out, their peers would have their heads as punishment. It was better in a way to keep things mum. Besides what did it really matter when he kissed her the way he did and held her as though she were precious to him?

Running her fingers through his hair, Hermione looked into his eyes, holding his gaze though she knew that he was becoming uncomfortable with the attention. She made to take off his shirt, to prove that her love wasn't one that she intended to hide from him, but was shoved away from him suddenly when he realized what exactly she was doing. "Don't, Hermione. You're not one of them; don't _try_ to make yourself like them."

Nodding her head, Hermione looked down at the floor and licked her lips. Rejection settled over her again, this time heavier, more prominent than before. To reject the one you loved was ten times worse than to reject the one you were attracted to.

"Hermione," Malfoy said, reaching out for her and pulling her flush against his body when she took his hand. "There are too many memories, ones that I would like to forget tied to this place. Maybe one day I'll share it with you. One day when things aren't quite so complicated."

"OK," Hermione said, sealing her fate.

**-x-**

She left the Tower first, feeling his eyes on her back till she was around the corner. And even then, when she knew she was out of sight, she felt as though he could see her still, that he was watching her every step. The upper halls were quiet, though in the distance, Hermione could hear the sounds of her classmates. She had half a mind to wander down to them and chat with friends that had for so long been neglected. But then a vision of Ron humiliating her in front of all those people sprung into her mind and she kept to her original destination.

The common room was dark, mysterious, when Hermione opened the portrait and stepped in. The fireplace was unlit, as it had been for so many nights since she walked in on Malfoy and Victoria Holloway. At the thought of another woman touching what she felt was hers, a sickening sensation overtook her belly, and her breaths became short with both anger and sadness. Jealousy had always been in her, lurking in the shadows till it chose to strike, and always at the most inopportune of moments.

She sat on the black velvet couch situated in the middle of the room before the fireplace and pulled her knees up to her chest. What it was that made her stay in that room, she couldn't say. Hermione despised this room and what memories she had of it. The way Malfoy and Holloway screwing each other had been imprinted into her mind for days and days afterwards. How it had caused her to think of her and Malfoy instead of Malfoy and Victoria. This was the cause of everything. If she hadn't stumbled upon them, then maybe she would still be content with Ron and thinking of the twenty children they were going to have, all with fiery red hair and freckles. But just being content with a life wasn't good enough to Hermione. She wanted adventure and wild passion with someone who didn't go behind her back and screw someone else. And then it hit her…

Did she really think that Malfoy was the type to be monogamous?

Falling to her side, Hermione buried her face into the black velvet cushion and nearly screamed with anger. Why her? Why couldn't things have just been normal in her life? She could have been a muggle, happy with the way she thought things were, and living with her parents and going to that all girls' school that she had been accepted to.

When she heard the portrait open and Malfoy step in, she didn't say anything to alert him of her presence. She curled further into a ball and tried to make herself blend in with the couch so that he wouldn't be able to see her. Embarrassment she didn't understand and anger she did settled over her when she heard his footfalls on the stone entry-landing. And Malfoy said nothing as well to show that he knew if she were there or not. He merely walked across the room and up the stairs. A moment after he had disappeared from Hermione's peripheral vision the door to his bedroom opened and then closed and all was silent. And that was all it took for the anger to dissipate and to be replaced with sadness. Hermione cried for reasons she couldn't explain. She should have been happy that after such disappointment with Ron that she regained some happiness with Malfoy, however difficult a relationship with him would be. She shouldn't be crying pathetically on a sofa in a room that held despised memories. She should be upstairs with the one she loved, even if he wouldn't prove that love to her like she so desperately wanted.

"Merlin, this is useless," Hermione mumbled, sitting up quickly and wiping the wetness from her cheeks and eyes. She wanted to forget about this. She wanted to just… be and be loved and be wanted. Was that so much for one person to ask?

**A/N: So my internet isn't working, so I have no idea when this is going to be coming out. But I'll keep writing anyway guys! Hopefully I'll have a ton of chapters to update when my internet gets fixed. Who knows?**


	10. Lavender Brown's Revenge: Part Deux

Chapter Ten: Your Fingertips Across My Skin…

"_You are but a fly in his web! We all are…" –__Girl With a Pearl Earring_

It was Saturday. The day had barely begun, the sun had not even begun contemplating rising and yet Hermione Granger lay wide awake in her bed, the covers wrapped securely about her person in a cocoon of blankets. Her clock screamed the time _3:15! 3:15! 3:15! _over and over until the numbers were imprinted on her lids whenever she closed her eyes.

Hermione lay quite still in her bed, staring at the pallid white ceiling as though waiting for divine intervention to take place and all of her questions to be answered in a matter of mere seconds. No such thing happened. Of course if it had, Hermione would have been asleep already, not laying in her bed, wide awake and replaying the previous night's scene over and over in her head as though her life were on constant replay.

Despite the fact that her lids felt like lead and her brain screamed in fury, Hermione's body simply would not comply with her wishes and slip into the catatonic state of sleep. No, instead her heart slipped into convulsions whenever she pictured what had almost transpired between Malfoy and herself, and her stomach convulsed in angry waves of jealousy when she pictured what he had shared with his conquests. Something that should have been hers, she felt. Life was horrid, Hermione decided briefly afterwards, when it became depressingly apparent that she would not be getting any sleep that night.

The clock read three twenty when Hermione finally snapped out of her latest nightmare involving Draco and Lavender shagging and fully registered that there was someone at her door. Three guesses who seeing as to how there was only ONE possible person who could be at her door.

Propping herself up on her elbows, Hermione waited till the door was opened and a second later, Malfoy slipped in, his face falling slightly when he realized that Hermione was indeed awake. Malfoy had opened his mouth to say something, Hermione assumed it was to ask if he could come in when she fell back upon her bed and pulled the covers over her head. Perhaps this would give him the impression that she wanted nothing to do with him.

Malfoy didn't say anything and Hermione heard the door close gently, presumably after Malfoy who was hopefully retreating back into his room. But then the mattress beside her sagged with the weight of another and Hermione's heart pummeled against her ribcage, having forgotten what it felt like to have another so close in her bed. The sheet above her head billowed slightly with the increase of her breathing and her eyes widened as though it would aid her in seeing him.

Gently he tugged the blankets away from her face and looked at her briefly before kissing her. He offered no explanation and Hermione never asked, nor did she stop him in his advances.

Hermione timidly placed her hands on his back, the warm skin burning her hands; his skin on her skin… Malfoy broke their kiss to quickly climb beneath the covers before recommencing and kissing her more fully, his hands tangled in her hair. His lips on her lips… Again, she was lost. It wasn't something she could control; he just did that to her, eliciting emotions that both scared her and excited her at the same time.

It wasn't until she felt his hands on her stomach, raising off her shirt that she pulled back, shoving his hands away and breaking their kiss. Once again fear gripped her heart, her poor desperate heart.

"Don't," Hermione warned. Malfoy's face was void of any feeling, though his eyes appeared to be deep with never ending emotions. His right hand snaked its way up the side of her torso and she felt her resolve melting into a puddle of nothingness. The reasons why she didn't want to continue began to fade… fall away from common sense and were replaced by the feelings she had for so long suppressed. It was small and trivial now, this difference, something as tiny as enmity, but enmity was all that they had harbored for each other for so long. Both were uncertain if they could love the other fully and without prejudice, without grudges.

It was so apparently obvious that these two enemies, these two people, were more than what they had once been. Maybe this lust had always been there, lurking just outside their conscious thoughts. The lust for the forbidden fruit; the untouchable, and now to feel it in their grasp was almost more than either could handle. They obviously didn't love each other to its highest degree; too many years of hate and malice had made the action of completely loving each other near impossible. But what they felt for one another was strong, if not bordering on the very edge of love, the point of no return…

Softly, slowly, Malfoy kissed across her skin, placing butterfly kisses on places he had once been so repulsed to even think about, but now wondered how he had never noticed them before. How Hermione Granger had only ever been known as a know-it-all, bookworm and Mudblood. She was, in all of its corny-glory, beautiful in ways that Malfoy didn't believe could belong to someone who had a temper more biting than even a hot poker on bare skin.

And just like that… it happened. Somewhere between the unspoken line of a truce and a bet, they fell, stumbling like calves into a fate that if given the choice, neither would have chosen. Hermione's mind was blissfully empty, her heart blissfully content and her body blissfully satisfied. She felt it, this action that would forever change them, but did nothing to stop it, having felt that they had already gone too far for it to matter any way.

They were both naked, and unlike Hermione would have thought, did not have one of those moments of silent talking when the man asks "if it's OK" and the woman nods her head slowly, as though terrified of what was to come. Malfoy didn't need to ask to know his answer. He had, after all, never been denied before, why should this time be any different?

A blazing heat over took her body when his hands touched her skin, his lip caressed her own and she felt him slide into her. It was far better than she ever could have imagined.

Every miniscule event seemed imprinted onto Hermione's brain as she fulfilled the one act that had been replayed over and over in her mind for the past weeks. Never before had she felt so wanted, like maybe her lover needed her for reasons other than the obvious.

And when it came to an end, and Malfoy finally looked into her eyes, he didn't see what he was so used to seeing. Adoration didn't fill Hermione's eyes, nor did a drunken smile play at her lips. Hermione Granger looked at him, reciprocating the very emotion that he, himself, felt; satisfaction. It was strange, Malfoy decided as he rested his forehead against Hermione's, to feel so… content, to not feel like he needed to find his next conquest. Searching, constantly searching, was no longer necessary…

Sweat dripped off of Malfoy's brow and Hermione reached up and wiped it away, her fingers running smoothly through his locks. Exhaustion overcame the both of them as Malfoy lay down beside her, close enough that their bodies were still touching. Hermione was considering turning away when Malfoy's hand found her own and he laced his fingers through hers, inhibiting any chance of her leaving him in any way.

Hermione's eyelids were fluttering close when Malfoy finally spoke. "Why did you hide from me?"

Opening her eyes, Hermione gingerly rubbed the fingers to her left hand, her free hand, over her brow, massaging her forehead. "I don't know… I didn't want to be rejected again."

"I am sorry for that," Malfoy said so softly that Hermione wondered if he had even said it at all.

The air around them was stale, stuffy and had the lingering smell of sex that lasted so long as the air remained uncirculated. Malfoy's breathing became deep and lethargic, each exhale farther spaced than the next until a pattern had been developed and Hermione could accurately predict the next time he would breathe. She turned her head towards him and propped herself on one elbow, her hand still entwined in his.

Sleep was the only chance Hermione felt she had to really study him. Stare at his face, his chest, his arms and his hands and look at what he was made of without feeling as though she in turn were being scrutinized. It was true, that his skin was soft, but Hermione didn't marvel at it the way most would have fawned. She lightly ran her fingertips over his cheek and over his jaw, backtracking and tracing the outline of his lips. Had he been awake, she felt that she would have been able to read a story in his irises, the things he never would've put into words expressed in the only way he knew how to communicate. But he wasn't and instead Hermione was left to make up her own story.

Slowly, Hermione removed her hand from his and lay down beside him, chewing on her lip as she did when she was uncertain of what to do. Folding her hands beneath her head, Hermione closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

**-x-**

Malfoy woke late the next morning, groaning when he opened his eyes and the sun glared brightly across his face. He stretched, spreading his arm across the bed beside him, the empty sheets cold.

"Granger?" He said slowly, sitting up and looking around the room. Hermione was no where to be seen. Her side of the bed was rumpled, her pillow shoved up between the crevice of the mattress and the headboard and when he peered over the side of the bed, her clothes were absent from the once-combined pile that was now only his own.

Throwing the covers off of his body and setting his feet on the floor, Draco rubbed the sleep from his eyes and grabbed his boxers from the pile, slipping his legs into the silk leg openings and standing, pulling them up around his waist and scratching his stomach as he walked across the floor towards the door.

The hall was dark as though the common room were void of any light, natural or artificial. Malfoy closed Hermione's door behind him, not liking the strike contrast the light from her room made in the darkness he knew shrouded Hermione.

She was sitting with her back to him on the sofa, staring at the unlit fireplace as though in a trance. Malfoy walked around the side of the sofa and watched her, waiting for her to speak.

After a few minutes of tense silence, Hermione glanced at him through the corner of her eye, and sighed before saying, "Don't you ever put any clothes on?"

"Why are you out here?" Malfoy counter-asked. He sat gingerly on the sofa next to Hermione, fearing that she would jump up and run away from him as she seemed to be doing so much lately.

Hermione shrugged her shoulders, the side of her mouth twitching giving away that she really knew the answer. She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her cheek against the top of them, her face turned towards Malfoy but her eyes defiantly not meeting his own. Finally she asked, "What are we?"

The question seemed to either scare Malfoy or truly stump him for the look on his face evolved into panic.

Of course, he had been asked this question before, and always he had the ready supply, usually said in a clipped tone, "nothing but a one-night stand" that gave him more enemies in the female population than he was comfortable with, but now…? What was this tumultuous relationship between Granger and himself? Was it even correct to label it as a relationship? All they had done was had sex and maybe talked a little bit, but if that constituted a relationship then Malfoy had had at least a hundred, maybe, and quite possibly, more. Hermione looked away, resting her chin on her knees. She seemed to know what he didn't or couldn't say. But Malfoy surprised her. His face was scrunched together as though in pain and he didn't seem at all in the least bit happy but as he slid across the velvet cushions closer to her, Hermione felt that maybe, just maybe, things would turn out OK. That maybe she hadn't spent what could easily be described as the best night in her life with a man who hated her very essence, and wanted something other than just another one-night-stand.

"Granger…" He began before stopping and looking around the common room as though the answer were written in the stone walls. "I don't know to be honest. I've never felt this way and to be honest I wish with all my being that it would go away. Never have I…" He paused and swallowed thickly over his tongue. His manly pride was stopping him. To express that one had feelings was just over-rated, and it took all of Malfoy's self-control to say fuck-it and get on with his declaration. "Never have I wanted to be with someone the way I want to be with you. I've never wanted to be with the same person after having had sex with them once, but Merlin, I've also never… never _loved_ a person the way I think I do you."

It appeared as though Hermione had been hexed with a freezing spell as other than her eyes growing as wide as dinner plates, she didn't move. Malfoy felt even more ridiculous than he felt was possible when Hermione still didn't say anything in return. She merely sat, a statue, with her eyes wide with wonder.

"Well?" Malfoy asked brusquely. Hermione seemed snapped from her reverie. "Aren't you even going to say anything?!"

"I…Well, I mean…" Hermione began at a loss for words. Malfoy's shoulders slumped slightly, admitting defeat, when suddenly, Hermione gave up with words and threw herself into his arms, planting a kiss on his lips that was so unrestrained and so full of passion, it threw him off balance and both of them fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

"So I take it that you do too?" Malfoy asked when Hermione broke away.

Hermione furrowed her eyebrows and said, "The only difference between your declaration and mine is that I actually have the balls to say 'I love you' and not make it sound pathetic with 'I think' attached to the front."

And before Malfoy could respond, she kissed him again, silencing his retribution.

**-x-**

One thing Hermione had never expected was the happiness attached to loving someone she had once considered so horrid. True, there were many things she couldn't do with Malfoy that would have been possible with any other normal person, such as hold his hand when they walked through the halls, or for that matter, even be seen within a ten-foot radius unless she wanted people to think they were about to fight and thus stall their procession to their next class.

However, she still found time to sneak away and kiss him senseless, or be kissed senseless, in a darkened alcove, between classes and somehow, "mysteriously" become partners with him in Potions, Transfiguration and Defense Against the Dark Arts, and still convince Harry that the worst day of her life was transpiring.

Things with Ron either wouldn't or weren't allowed to cool down. Hermione had expected more, perhaps too much, she reasoned, from the fiery red-head. After all, he was one who could hold a grudge that spanned the width of the continent of Antarctica five times over and still when that was done, would still have to _consider_ forgiving whoever he felt had wronged him. And, of course, through family pride, Ginny had all but forgiven Hermione, though she was one who knew first hand the extent of Ron's wrath.

Everything in Hermione's life was becoming normal, too routine, when she was first spied on by Lavender Brown. Her hair had grown about an inch and stuck straight up from her head in pointy, uneven spikes. Her blue eyes were as piercing as ever and as she trailed Hermione into the girl's bathroom, thirty minutes after the Head Girl had asked to leave Transfiguration to go to the restroom, she felt like a super-sleuth in her own Nancy Drew book.

Hermione hadn't noticed Lavender slip in. She stood at a sink, her hands gripping the edges with a vice-grip, and her head dipped so that her hair fell on each side and hid her face from view. Her clothes were rumpled, and of what Lavender could tell her hair was bushier than normal as though someone had spent a great deal of time running their fingers through it. As Lavender took a step closer though, her shoes silent on the tiled floors, she could hear Hermione's labored breathing, as though she had just participated in a marathon event.

Being as curious as she was, Lavender hid behind the wide, square trash can, peering around the side at Hermione who had straightened her posture and seemed to be looking at someone else behind her in the mirror. Lavender readjusted her position to try and get a better look at whoever it was, but was saved from too much work when he stepped out from the row of cubicles and into her line of view. Draco Malfoy.

Lavender Brown was exceedingly smarter than everyone thought she was and surprisingly, could put two and two together faster then anyone thought was possible. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the _why_ Malfoy was buckling his belt or maybe even the _how_ it got that way. Same as Hermione, his clothes were wrinkled and his tie seemed to be missing, and his perfect blonde hair stuck up at an odd angle at the back of his head.

Of course, she had told Hermione to get as close as she could to him for blackmail, but this! This was the icing on the cake. Maybe even better was the way, unbeknownst to being watched, they smiled at one another and Malfoy kissed Hermione tenderly in a way that made Lavender's blood boil. This tender moment after apparent love-making should have been hers! She was almost positive that she was better then Granger could ever dream of being in bed!

But perhaps, the one thing that left Lavender even more speechless was the words, Malfoy said to his arch-nemesis.

Never before had the words, "I love you" crushed against Lavender's heart with such force. There were guys who used it so loosely, they told everyone they slept with they loved them. But this was Malfoy. Straight up, "I don't care for anyone and feelings are gay" Malfoy! And there was no way in this world she could have mistaken it for a lie. The look in his eyes, the way he held Hermione Granger, of all people, said it all. He truly did love her.

Lavender near passed out with silent rage as she watched them make a better appearance of themselves in the mirror and trapeze out of the bathroom giggling like idiots and kissing heartily before separating again.

"How dare you, Hermione Granger?" Lavender whispered as she stood from her hiding place and walked across the bathroom towards the sink Hermione had previously been standing at. "Do you think that I am one to be made a fool of?"

She turned on a faucet and water fell with the sound of a miniature waterfall into the stone basin, splashing against the sides and on the middle of Lavender's robe in tiny droplets. "I'll get you back, I swear it."

Just as she was about to leave, the bathroom door was thrown open and in came a girl with blond curls and a hand clamped tightly over her mouth. She darted into a cubicle and promptly began to retch, much to Lavender's chagrin until she noticed just _who_ this girl was. "Oh, this is just too perfect!" Lavender whispered, nearing the cubicle. Adopting a caring persona, she knocked softly on the door as soon as the retching subsided and said as nicely as she could, "Are you all right?"

"No!" Came the sobbing reply. Lavender opened the door and looked down at the girl who was leaning on the toilet for support.

"What's wrong?" Lavender asked, and none too nicely either. Her eyes glimmered with the prospect of gossip, and hurtful gossip at that.

"I- I…" The girl began to sob uncontrollably and it took all of Lavender's self control not to hex the girl into oblivion as punishment for keeping her waiting.

"Yes?" Lavender prompted, falling to her knees beside her. The girl still wouldn't make eye contact as she stammered "I'm pregnant!"

And finally as though this declaration deserved some eye contact, she looked at Lavender Brown and her mouth dropped open with horror. Lavender was grinning like a cat when she heard the news and stood, bounding from the bathroom, happier than she could have thought possible.

**-x-**

The Great Hall was buzzing with excitement when Hermione walked through the doors, ten minutes after the meal had started and late because of her most recent escapade with Malfoy in the very back of the library. Her lips were rosy red when she sat down beside Harry towards the middle of the table and her eyes roamed back up to the front of the hall to see when he would enter. No more than five minutes later, Malfoy came in, followed by another girl who was blatant in checking him out. Hermione seethed in quiet anger.

"Ahem," came a voice from her right and Hermione almost fell off of her chair when she thought she'd just been graced with Umbrigde's ghost.

Hermione turned and smiled hesitantly when she met eyes with Lavender. "Oh, hi, Lavender."

Lavender didn't repeat the greeting, merely sat her plate down beside Hermione's and proceeded to tell her the most 'dreadful' news. "Have you heard?"

Hermione hating the very thought of gossip replied with the standard, "Heard what?" and continued eating.

"Well," Lavender began, her voice low and her head close to Hermione's. "I went to the bathroom today during second period, you know the one on the fourth floor close to the Transfiguration classrooms?"

"Hmm," Hermione said, slightly panicking when she heard Lavender speak of the very restroom where she and Draco had first made love that day. She looked up and across the Great Hall meeting his eye and conveying as best she could that someone might know.

"Well," Lavender said again, readjusting her position causing Malfoy to realize just who might know. Hermione saw his face drop of any color. "I was standing at the sink, just minding my own business when this poor girl came dashing in and nearly puked all over the floor. And you know how well I take that…"

Hermione nodded her head and said, "Yes" hoping Lavender would get to the point.

"Well, this girl began to retch horribly and I seriously began to feel sorry for her," Lavender said, her fork and knife clenched tightly in her hands to keep her from spilling the beans right away. She needed to make this so much worse than it really had the potential of already being. "I knocked on the stall door and asked her if she was OK and when she replied with 'no' I opened the door and there was Daphne Greengrass leaning against the toilet, her blond curls drenched with sweat and puke still on her chin."

Instinctively at the name of Greengrass, Hermione looked up at Malfoy who was still watching her with guarded eyes. Lavender noticed and smiled evilly as she continued with her story. "I asked her what was the matter, and Daphne looked at me and said as solemn as she could, 'I'm pregnant'."

Hermione's heart stuttered. Her breaths hitched in her throat and unexpected tears welled in her eyes.

And yet, Lavender still had more to say. "And do you know who the father is?"

Shaking her head, Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and willed this to be a bad dream.

As soon as the name left Lavender's lips, the whole world stopped. The air was deathly quiet and when Hermione opened her eyes all she could see was Malfoy, staring at her and standing slightly in his seat. And then, as if in slow motion she looked at Lavender who was nodding her head and wearing a manic grin on her face.

"Yes," Lavender said her voice oddly distorted. "I know. Whoever would have thought that he would have done this?"

And just like that the world regained its normal speed and Hermione felt herself falling backwards off of the bench, his name still floating around and around her brain. Just as her world went black she said it once more, "Draco Malfoy," and promptly fainted.

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**A/N: Do you hate me for this GIGANTIC cliffy? Haha! I'm already starting the next chapter and things are moving according the plan as I had it in my mind so all I ask is to be patient! As always, thank you to may most loyal reviewers, maripas especially, and give me love by reviewing again!**

**--I've Got Another Confession to Make--**


	11. Goodbye

**A/N: OK, so I'm supposed to be cleaning the house for my mum, but I'm bored and really don't want to do it, so out of pure curiosity of what our dear portrayer of Draco Malfoy is doing I went to and watched perhaps the funniest thing in my life where Tom firsts hears about Dumbledore being gay. If you didn't know, Rowling announced it herself in an interview in New York; I'm not lying I swear! If you want a good laugh or perhaps just want to stare at our cute Draco Malfoy then check it out!**

Chapter Eleven: Goodbye, My Almost Lover…

_Goodbye almost my lover, goodbye my hopeless dream…So long my luckless romance, my back is turned on you. Should've known you'd bring me heartache. Almost lovers always do. –A Fine Frenzy_

Initially, Hermione had planned to stay the hell away from Malfoy, and for the first few days after the incident in the Great Hall, it had worked wonderfully. At night, she immediately went with Ginny to Gryffindor Tower and bunked with her in the sixth form girl's dormitory. Unfortunately, for her, the peace and Malfoy-Free-Environment she had been living in was soon dashed to pieces when she woke up Monday morning in the Gryffindor Dormitories without a clean uniform or her books.

As much as she wanted Ginny to do it for her, she had to muster up the courage to walk into the Head's Common Room and through it towards her room, bypassing Malfoy either lurking in the entrance way or lying in the middle of her path so that she couldn't bypass him and ignore him any longer. She could only imagine the hell he was going to give her for ignoring him all this time.

The halls were crowded with early risers, all of whom whispered about Hermione as she walked with her head held high towards her dormitories.

"Did you hear what happened…?"

"Lavender Brown from Gryffindor said she saw the whole thing…!"

"…Can you believe a Slytherin and a Gryffindor though…?"

"Malfoy and Granger, though? That's just gross! I mean, look at her…!"

Hermione pretended that she couldn't hear. That Lavender Brown had not only just ruined her life by spilling the beans about Malfoy and Daphne Greengrass, but also that she had not spilled the juicy details, albeit un-true details, of her intimate relationship with Malfoy, spreading the rumor that she was his latest conquest and the next mother of his child, after Greengrass of course. As preposterous as if sounded, Hermione couldn't help but doubt him and herself. He was a cheating, conniving snake who did the very thing Lavender was accusing him of, except Hermione wasn't-

The sudden realization hit her like a ton of bricks. "No!" She whispered, running the rest of the way to her common room and banging into the room like a bat out of hell up the stairs to her room. She threw open the drawer to her nightstand and started throwing things pell-mell from the drawers cavity until she had found the very thing she was searching for.

Her mother had insisted she take them when she found out about Hermione and Ron and also learned of how much they _adored_ one another. Hermione nearly cried when she held the packet in her hands, the first two months worth of pills gone but for this one. She flipped through the cartridges and came upon the month of November. There was only one pill taken, back when she had first started this art of seduction nonsense with Malfoy and then promptly forgot about her own daily obligations.

And now…?

Hermione threw the plastic container away from her, resigning to tears when she heard it hit her door and break. She wasn't any better than Daphne Greengrass or Malfoy or any of his other conquests. How could she have been so stupid? Hermione Granger, the smartest witch of her age had been so caught up in a romantic relationship with Hogwarts' leading Man-Whore that she didn't even ponder to take a break to step back into reality and think of the consequences.

She cried uncontrollably for five minutes before she even remembered her original purposes for coming back to her dormitory at all and dressed with shaky fingers. Hermione brushed her hair languidly and half-heartedly and then pulled it up into a ponytail missing an entire section behind her left ear and never even caring enough to sweep it behind her ear.

Hermione left her bedroom with tears still pouring over her cheeks and went down the stairs to the common room to find her book bag when she first ran into _him_. She decided upon first glance that he was no longer worthy of a name and thus resigned to calling Malfoy _him_ for the rest of eternity. Or for as long as she remembered to that is.

"Hermione, please," Malfoy said standing from his place on the couch, most likely wasting as much time as he could until he had to leave for classes in the hopes that she would come back to the common room. "Let me explain."

Never saying a word, Hermione gathered up her books and quills before stuffing them haphazardly into her bag with angry movements. She walked around the common room gathering her things, Malfoy hot on her heels, pleading with her to listen to him, to what he was saying.

"Hermione, you know that I love you," Malfoy said softly, almost afraid of what Hermione would do to him when he said this. But she didn't do anything. She just kept gathering her things until all that was left in the common room was his possessions. If anyone else were to walk in they would think that only a single person lived here. "I don't want to be with Daphne, I don't want to be with anyone else! I don't want that baby!"

Scoffing, Hermione turned and opened her mouth to criticize him for saying something so harsh about his own child, when she remembered that she didn't care and promptly closed her mouth again, pursing her lips together in anger that she had almost spoken to _him._

"Why won't you listen to me?" Malfoy yelled, pushing one of the lamps on the tables by the couches over where it shattered.

Hermione went back up to her room and deposited the things she would no longer need in her room. Malfoy, never one to back down from a fight involving the Head Girl followed, though he didn't enter her room. She dropped everything on her bed and stooped down, picking something up from the floor. His boxers were crushed in her hands, and in her fury, she actually ripped them at the waistband, though neither noticed so focused as they were on their anger.

Shoving the boxers into his hands and pushing him from her room, Hermione secured her book bag on her shoulder and said, "I believe these are yours. Keep your filthy things out of my room."

"Granger! Don't you _dare_ walk away from me!" Malfoy yelled, his voice filled with anger and a slight bit of hurt.

"Watch me!" Hermione yelled back as she left the common room and slammed the door behind her.

**-x-**

The day was hard enough without the enduring pain of Transfiguration.

Hermione had been having a relatively good day, considering how shit her life was at the moment until she reached her favorite class right as the bell rang and stopped in her tracks. She had almost forgotten her unspoken agreement with Greengrass to sit next to her during class and now that she was late, she had no where else to sit but next to her.

"Miss Granger," McGonagall said from the front of the room. "Please take your seat."

Malfoy glared at her when she passed and almost swore she saw his foot dart out to trip her, before she cut behind Ron and Harry to the opposite aisle, choosing instead to take the long route to her desk.

Daphne looked positively frightened at the thought of sitting next to Hermione Granger, especially since the girl had a murderous look in her eyes when she laid eyes on Daphne. Briefly she pondered why she had even sat in this seat, knowing what she did about Draco and Hermione. But then she realized it was most likely out of habit that she did half the things that she did now. Hermione sat slowly into her seat, her back rigid, as though in rigor, and dropped her bag noisily onto the ground beside her. She didn't take out her parchment, quill and spare quill along with her charmed ink that changed colors with a simple spell, marking what she wanted to remember later. She sat stoically in her seat, eyes trained forward, never even moving when Daphne brushed against her arm and jumped to the side, afraid that Hermione would explode and curse her with an unforgivable.

"Now that Miss Granger has arrived, I would like to announce that we will be working in groups of four for this next project," McGonagall began. "The groups are preset and cannot be changed for any reason, and will count as fifty percent of your grade for this semester. Now, please stand. If you are in the front row, please walk around to the opposite side of your desk and push it together with the one behind you, forming a table for four. Does everyone understand? Good, now get started."

Hermione moved their table seeing as to how Daphne was in a delicate position and refused to push the desk for fear of having a miscarriage. Silently, Hermione prayed that she would, just in spite of ruining her life.

"Good, now that we have that all settled and have only received minor injury," McGonagall said, glancing at Hermione who had pinched her fingers between the desk when Dean Thomas and Susan Bones shoved theirs roughly against hers and Daphne's. Dean apologized profusely, even saying that he would mind getting ice or a band aid for her, should she need one. But one look at Susan Bones' face was all it took for her to forget about the pain and swelling of her finger and sit regally back into her chair.

"Now, when I call your name, you will gather your things and move to the desk assigned you," McGonagall said as she moved to the first table where Susan Bones, Dean Thomas Hermione and Daphne were congregated. "In this group we have Harry Potter, Pansy Parkinson, Michael Whitmore and Susan Bones."

There was a loud shuffling as Hermione and those not in the group stood from their seats and went to stand by the wall as Harry and his new group took theirs seats at her table. Harry gave her a sympathetic look that was not returned in any way as McGonagall continued with her list.

At the third table, she paused, and furrowed her eyebrows together in the way that let the students know that even _she_ thought they were in for a ride from hell. "Well…"

She looked up at Hermione, her eyes so sad at what she was about to do and Hermione wished she could die, right there at that very moment when she interpreted that look.

"Draco Malfoy," McGonagall began, her voice strong and yet still unsure. "Hermione Granger." There was a collective gasp in the room amongst her peers. "Daphne Greengrass." The students were now practically falling over themselves with the anticipation of how much worse this group could become. "And Ronald Weasley."

Hermione didn't wish to die. If she died, she would still be on the planet. She wanted God to smite her and leave nothing behind but a black mark on the floor where she had once been standing. For the longest of moments, no one moved. And then Daphne took a step towards the table and just like that the Earth began to revolve on its axis again, and Malfoy stood and took the seat opposite her. Ron stood next from his spot where he had been sitting with Harry and took the seat beside Daphne, scooting his chair as far as he could away from her.

"Miss Granger?" McGonagall said, motioning to the only empty seat at the table. "Please take your seat."

Malfoy was staring at her, his eyes blank and his mouth set in a hard line that showed his displeasure. Ron was refusing to meet anyone's eye and actually looked as though he were the tiniest bit sorry, but for what, Hermione as unsure. And then there was Daphne, who was positively beaming from having been paired with Malfoy, whom under his normal circumstances was avoiding her like the plague in revenge for what he felt was her mistake; as though he would actually take responsibility for getting a girl pregnant! She should have been using some kind of protection! It wasn't like it was ALL _his_ responsibility to make sure that there was a contraceptive, though now that he thought of it, he probably should have. Draco glanced at Daphne who giggled as soon as their eyes met and rubbed her foot against his leg. Recoiling, Draco turned his lower half sideways so that Daphne couldn't touch him and stared at the table top.

Static electricity filled the air when Hermione finally managed to push herself off of the wall and stumble over to the table. She regained some of her pride when she sat on the seat, with posture far better than that of any Pureblooded witch Draco or even Daphne could scornfully think of.

"Right," McGonagall said. "Now, there will be two separate assignments to this project, though in the end, you will need to meet with all four members to make a final assessment before you are to turn it in."

McGonagall stood close to Hermione and her group partners as though afraid that the table would erupt in flames and each of the four would begin the next world war in her classroom. "The person sitting next to you will be your main partner and you two will become very close indeed. You will need to meet everyday after class to gather your information. You will sit in my class together everyday and at the end of the project you will turn in a joint paper pinpointing the finer points of the project. Failing to work together properly will result in a zero. No exceptions."

She looked sad as she said this and momentarily shared a look with Hermione before turning to the rest of the class.

Never before had Hermione hated a teacher as much as she did at this moment.

Murder her.

Point a wand to her temple and say the magic words. She _wanted_ to die; anything to get away from this hell hole and the people stuck in it. And to make it worse… She was partnered with Malfoy…

"Now I would like for you to discuss with your group members what topic you will be researching. It can be anything to do with Chapter Twelve in your textbooks," McGonagall walked away from the foursome and began to circulate through the aisles between the desks, approving on which topic the group was to be studying.

Hermione settled her head on the table top and was rolling it from side to side when someone touched the top of her head. The contact was short and so light Hermione had to ponder if in reality, it had actually happened. Then Ron cleared his throat and Hermione raised her head slowly. His blue eyes were full of sorrow and his mouth was turned down at the corners; he looked like a dog in the window of an animal shop; pathetic.

"What?" Hermione asked gruffly. Malfoy looked between the two, his eyes narrowed with distaste.

Daphne cleared her throat loudly trying to get Malfoy's attention. The effect was grating on everyone's nerves, though the occupants of the room chose to ignore her rather than say anything.

"Well," Ron said, lowering his head. He looked at Malfoy briefly before holding up his pointer finger and reaching into his bag and producing a piece of parchment and a quill. Hermione watched, faking disinterest as Ron hurriedly scribbled across the parchment. Ending his note with a flourish, Ron folded it in half and slid it across the table to Hermione.

Opening the note in such a way that Malfoy could not read it, Hermione scanned the contents, her heart palpitating in her rib cage.

_Mione—_

_I don't know how else to say this than without just saying it plain and simple. I'm sorry. I've talked to Harry, and he helped me to see what an arrogant ass I've been. You need your friends, and I hope that you will still consider me a friend, despite the way I've treated you. There are a lot of things that we need to talk about. So many things that you don't understand, and so many that I refused to. Please accept my apology. I'm just not the same guy without your friendship._

_--R._

Hermione closed her eyes tightly and bit hard on her lower lip in thought. Malfoy leaned in towards Hermione in hopes of sneaking a peek at the note while Daphne took the moment to readjust her top and continue trying to get Malfoy's attention by clearing her throat repeatedly, each time getting louder.

Just as she was about to open her mouth in response to Ron's note, Malfoy spoke, his voice hard to Daphne, "If you don't bloody quit right now I'll hex your throat closed and make it to where you die within seconds!"

Where any normal girl would have been at least slightly frightened, Daphne merely sat a little bit straighter and smiled softly, batting her eyelashes at a thoroughly disgusted Malfoy.

"Daphne?" Hermione said, leaning forward, crumbling the note in her left hand. "I know that you would love to be with Malfoy, and well, seeing as to how you are carrying his baby and everything, I just thought that maybe we could trade places. You know, so that if you needed anything, than he would be right there to get it for you."

Daphne jumped up from her seat and shoved her books across the table to Hermione's place.

"Wait, just wait a second!" Malfoy said standing and catching the attention of the other's in the classroom. "What if I don't want to be partnered with Greengrass? What if I want to stay with the partner I already have and who says that McGonagall will even let us?"

The table turned towards their teacher who stood there perplexed for a while before she actually said anything. "Well," McGonagall began, taking a step away from the table and positioning herself behind Harry slightly. "I suppose that if Mr. Weasley doesn't mind being partnered with Miss Granger and Miss Greengrass refuses to work with anyone but Mr. Malfoy, than the only solution than would be for you to trade partners."

Malfoy growled under his breath and shoved his books off of the table so that they flew into the wall and fell to the floor with a clatter. Some of the girls in the room jumped, so unused to seeing Malfoy behave with such un-control.

Hermione gathered her things and walked around the table to Daphne's recently vacated seat and sat down slowly, staring at Malfoy who had sat back into his seat and was currently pouting at Hermione like a spoilt brat. Ron smiled slightly at Hermione, still scared at what the Head Girl would do to him if he even made a move to be friendly.

Harry was staring, his mouth slightly open as Hermione and Ron worked together to accomplish their topic and basic information without confrontation or complaining on Ron's part. As the bell rang and Hermione and Ron gathered their things together and left the Transfiguration class room with Harry in tow, things seemed relatively normal, almost as though, to Hermione they were once again the Golden Trio and nothing that had taken place over the past month and a half had even taken place.

Ron and Harry had taken their places on either side of Hermione and laughed and talked about Quidditch, complained about classes and asked questions as to whether Hermione would write their papers for them to which Hermione smiled and said that they were smart enough to write it on their on.

And yet, Hermione could not shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. That maybe she was making the worst decisions of her life, the ones that she would come to regret later on in life. But her life was back on track, her place was with Harry and Ron, not with Malfoy, and as she walked to corridors with the two boys, she couldn't help but keep her eyes trained on a head of blonde locks just in front of her. Almost as though he knew she was looking at him, Malfoy turned and looked at her. His eyes were sad, though the rest of his face hid this emotion with the angry set of his mouth and the crinkling of his nose.

Hermione sighed tiredly, her heart heavy as the crowd of students surged and blocked Malfoy from her view and Hermione breathed in deeply, as Harry and Ron pulled her down one of the back corridors towards the Great Hall, their voices pushing away any thoughts of _him_ and bringing her back into her life, as it were.

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**A/N: OK, So this chapter is confusing and doesn't make a lot of sense. I know that you're thinking "What the HELL????" towards the Ron and Hermione fiasco that is my twisted version of their tumultuous relationship despite the fact Malfoy and Hermione belong together. Things are going to be a little different. There isn't a lot of Malfoy and Hermione interaction in the next few chapters, but all the same, they are going to be important for the story line so read them anyway. And don't flame me too bad. Daphne Greengrass gets her just reward in the end.**


	12. I Saw a Change in You

**A/N: This chapter is going to explain most of what happened in the last chapter, but may not describe all of it, so when you review, don't state the obvious unless you are so confused you can't understand any of it at all and then I can explain it more fully. **

Chapter Twelve: I Saw a Change in You…

"What are you playing at?" Malfoy asked Hermione's retreating form as they walked the seventh floor during patrol.

"What are you talking about, Malfoy?" Hermione said, quickening her pace and folding her arms over her chest. Her wand was gripped tightly in her hand, her knuckles white with the firmness with which she held back from hexing the man behind her. "You always seem to assume I know what the hell you're talking about…"

Malfoy reached out and grabbed Hermione's arm, whipping her around so that they faced one another. "You do know what I'm talking about! Trading partners in Transfiguration! Making me work with _her_ when I know you can't even stand the thought of me touching her paper! You're jealous and yet you won't even admit that you're wrong! That everyone makes mistakes!"

Hermione felt tears well up in her eyes. Her stomach twisted and did flip flops, her skin burning where his hand was touching her and she felt the insatiable need to fall to her knees and _beg_ for forgiveness. But Hermione was a Gryffindor, brave and loyal, even if bravery and loyalty could fuck you over in the end.

"I don't see how it is only _I_ who am at fault here," Hermione managed to say, her heart pounding furiously in her chest. "I'm not the one who got a girl pregnant," _well, two, actually, _Hermione felt like saying. "I'm not the one who royally fucked myself over!" _Again, not true,_ Hermione said in her mind.

"And yet, you still cannot seem to FORGIVE a person for the mistakes that they have made!" Malfoy said gruffly, shoving her against the wall behind her. "You would bow down to Voldemort and claim eternal loyalty before you would forgive me for something I felt I could not control! You don't understand what I went through before this happened, before I fell for you!"

"Like you ever even said anything about your past!" Hermione countered. "You just all of a sudden fall in love with me and once upon a blue moon you decide that you want to be with me for the rest of your life, expecting _me_ to just ignore the fact that you're going to have a baby with another woman? Do you still not get it? How I am supposed to love you and still be cordial to this child when I cannot stand Daphne Greengrass? How am I supposed to know that because you inadvertently love this child, that you do not love the mother of the child?"

"Who says that I'm going to love the child?" Malfoy said. Immediately, he knew that he had said the wrong thing. Hermione's face dropped into a frown and she gained super human strength, shoving Malfoy away from her. He stumbled back across the corridor as Hermione stalked up to him, pushing him against the opposite wall, her finger pointed accusingly at him, prodding him in the chest as she spoke.

"Then who are you to say that you are going to love _my _children?" Hermione said, exacting her point by shoving him in the chest. "Who are you to tell me that you aren't going to a love a human being that _YOU_ fathered with another woman, but love mine, who you also fathered, simply because they are mine?!"

"Hermione, I don't love Daphne, just like I never loved Lavender Brown and whoever else I slept with," Malfoy immediately slapped a hand over his mouth after the sentence left his mouth. What was wrong with him tonight? Everything was coming out wrong and only making Hermione distance herself from him, and rightly so.

"Whoever else?" Hermione said, turning away. She walked a ways down the hall before turning back to him and smiling manically, the light from her wand illuminating her face eerily. "Nice to see that I'm the only one who mattered out of the hundreds of others you've slept with. Also nice to know that _if_ I were to have a relationship with you, it would be monogamous."

"Who's to say that it won't be?" Malfoy countered, taking a step towards her.

"You did," Hermione replied sorrowfully. "The moment Daphne Greengrass became pregnant. The time you spent with Lavender Brown and whoever else you've slept with."

**-x-**

It was blatantly obvious that she didn't forgive Ron. If someone didn't see that then Hermione felt like handing them a stupid badge. Ron and Hermione handled each other with forced respect, Ron having realized that Hermione hated the very ground he walked on, and in the common sense, revealing that he really didn't see the wrong he had done in their relationship.

Malfoy avoided Hermione like the plague, choosing instead to slam doors and break things whenever they were in the common room at the same time. And Hermione ignored him as best she could.

After a month of the silent treatment, Malfoy began to "warm" up towards Daphne, pretending to be doting and caring and even inviting her up to his room after classes, making sure to parade her before Hermione in a "I-can-live-without-you-and-still-make-you-jealous" type of way.

And then… Dumbledore came knocking on the portrait, bringing ill-tidings. Or rather, good-tidings for Hermione, and ill for Daphne Greengrass. He sat Malfoy and Greengrass down in the Common Room and had a real heart-to-heart about the real hazards of teen pregnancy as Hermione hid up on the landing, peering down the staircase at the trio. Malfoy was pouting, a permanent feature for him as of late, his arms crossed over his chest as tears poured down Daphne's cheeks. He sneered at Daphne, who in her fit of depressed passion, clung to his arm, becoming the next Pansy Parkinson. Yanking his arm from Daphne's clutches, he stared resolutely at Dumbledore, almost as though he had an inkling as to what was going to happen.

"Miss Greengrass," Dumbledore began. "This isn't easy for me to do, especially now that times have changed."

Hermione readjusted her position, narrowing her eyes as she strained to listen.

"I'm afraid there are certain rules here, lay down by the founders, that no matter what I do, I cannot avoid," Dumbledore said, folding his hands together. Malfoy's eyes narrowed and his gaze floated up the staircase just behind Dumbledore. Hermione froze, hoping that the shadows were enough to keep him from seeing her. After a couple of seconds, he looked away, a deep frown line forming above his eyebrows. The effect was aging. "Miss Greengrass, due to the state that you are currently in, it is imperative of me to expel you from Hogwarts."

Hermione gasped, and immediately flattened herself against the wall when Malfoy's gaze snapped up the stairs again, locking on the spot where she had been just seconds before. She could almost feel his gaze through the stone ledge, knowing that he knew she was there, eavesdropping.

There was silence for a couple of minutes and then a sob came from Daphne. "What?" She finally asked, her voice pained.

"I'm terribly sorry, Miss Greengrass," Dumbledore continued, though his voice sounded anything but sorry. It was almost as though this speech was just one of the many he'd had to make throughout his reign as Headmaster. "But there's no way I can allow you to stay here whilst you are pregnant. There are remedial courses you can take after you have had your baby. Certain classes you can take that will allow you to earn a diploma from this school."

"What about _him_?" Daphne managed, her voice straining the last word as she jerked her head to the side, clearly talking about Malfoy.

"_Me?_" Malfoy squeaked, under the impression that if he hadn't been mentioned then he wouldn't be expelled as well. Hermione's heart squeezed painfully. She couldn't imagine him not being there, especially when she still, inadvertently, loved him so. Her stomach jumped up into her throat as she hesitantly peered around the ledge and looked down into the common room.

"Well…" Dumbledore's voice was soft, almost as though he hadn't wanted to go down this road. "You see, Miss Greengrass, there is nothing against a… _male_, for having committed this act. To be honest with you, I don't have any evidence against Mr. Malfoy saying that he defiantly is the man that impregnated you."

Hermione could have laughed at the expression on Daphne's face. The blond haired girl stood from her place on the couch and raised her hand as if to slap Dumbledore, an action that Hermione would have felt he deserved, if she hadn't been against Daphne.

"How dare you! How _dare_ you!" Daphne screeched. "What the bloody hell gives you the right to call me a- a _**whore?**_"

"Now," Dumbledore began. He held his hands up before him as though that would lighten the situation. If anything, it only made Daphne more mad. "Let's not be irrational, Miss Greengrass."

"_Irrational?"_ Daphne screamed before picking up one of Hermione's leisure books lying on the coffee table and throwing it across the room. It hit the wall and fell to the floor, pages bent and some ripped from their binding. It was all Hermione could do to not run down the stairs and put everyone out of their misery by killing the girl for ruining her book.

"Miss Greengrass," Dumbledore said standing. "I'm going to have to ask you to calm down, or you're going to have to be escorted out of the building."

Daphne remained breathing hard as she turned her eyes upon Draco who was still sitting on the couch, his head supported by his right hand, a smirk on his lips. He seemed amused by the whole ordeal and merely shrugged his shoulders when Dumbledore implied that she was indeed a whore.

Hermione placed a hand over her belly, subconsciously rubbing her fingers lightly over the slightly rounded skin.

"I'll leave you to yourselves for now," Dumbledore said, walking across the room. Hermione had to nearly lie down on the floor to still be able to see him. His eyes flickered briefly up to where Hermione lay hiding before resting on Draco and Daphne. "I believe that you two have a great deal to discuss."

And then he left, closing the door as silently as was humanly possible leaving Daphne to turn towards Draco expectantly, her arms crossed over her bosom.

"Well?" She prompted, tapping her foot impatiently on the carpeted floor.

"Well what?" Draco asked, standing and walking over to Hermione's book. He squatted to the floor and gathered the ruined novel into his hands before standing and turning back to Daphne. "You really must be more specific."

"Well?" She said again, tossing her hands into the air in exasperation. "What are we going to do?"

Draco became rather still, his face blank. "We?"

"Yes we! Me-YOU-**WE!"** Daphne said, nearly screaming. She looked as though she were ready to throw more things, but couldn't find anything in the vicinity that wasn't already destroyed by Draco's anger.

"Doth my ears deceive me?" He asked in his pompous, jack-ass voice.

"Don't be an ass, Draco," Daphne said, her voice low and menacing.

"There is no 'we' in this, Daphne," Malfoy said, his voice serious as he took a few steps closer to Daphne.

Hermione leaned farther around the corner as Daphne's eyes welled up with tears, her arms hanging limply at her sides.

"What?" She asked, her voice as soft as a whisper. "What are you saying?"

"Sayonara?" Draco supplied, tucking the book possessively underneath his arm. "That it was fun while it lasted, but I must move on to greener pastures?"

"Draco," Daphne said taking a step back to every one of his closer. Hermione felt tears of her own welling up in her eyes. She blamed it on being pregnant.

"After all," Draco said, straightening and taking a couple of steps away from the distraught girl. "A Malfoy could never be associated with someone who can't even finish school. What would it look like to my family honor?"

There was a strained silence as Daphne hugged her arms tightly to herself and restrained a sob. Hermione's heart briefly went out to the girl, wondering how she could ever have fallen in love with a man so heartless.

"I hate you, Draco Malfoy," Daphne whispered, her voice full of emotion. "I hate you more than life itself."

"The feeling, I assure you, is mutual," Draco said crossing his arms around the book and giving her a look that could have sent the devil back to hell with hear. Daphne gasped and a sob shook her body. She hung her head and then almost as though she realized where she was, she ran from the room, slamming the portrait hard behind her so that the sound of metal ringing echoed throughout the common room.

"You can come out now, Granger," Malfoy said quietly, looking down at the book in his hands.

Hermione contemplated whether or not she should risk walking down the stairs, figuring he would be more angry if she turned and went back to her room instead of walking down the stairs and facing him like the brave Gryffindor she was.

"How did you know I was there?" Hermione asked softly, her anger temporarily dissipating when he turned his eyes towards her and fixed her with a stare that made her knees weak.

"You're not very good at being stealthy," Malfoy said, running his fingers lightly over the embossed letter M on the cover of the novel.

Hermione hung her head and crossed her arms over her stomach.

"You were so mean," Hermione whispered, finally looking up at Malfoy to find staring hard at her. "Why?"

Malfoy sighed before answering. "You can't pretend to love someone you don't, Hermione."

There was another silence, an awkwardness had settled over them. Hermione shifted her feet and looked up at Malfoy about to ask for her book back when he spoke up, efficiently cutting her off.

"Why do you hate me, Hermione?" Malfoy asked, his voice sounding far more sad than she had ever though possible.

Hermione swallowed thickly over her tongue, willing the tears that were reforming in her eyes to go away. But against all her hopes and prayers, one fell and then another, cascading over her cheeks each gaining more speed till they fell consistently down her cheeks. Malfoy took a few steps closer to her, closing the space between them but still refrained from touching her. "What did I do?"

"It was everything," Hermione burst. "I had finally grown to trust you, even love you, and then I find out that Daphne Greengrass was pregnant with YOUR baby! How would you have felt Draco if I told you I was pregnant with another man's baby?!"

It seemed as though Malfoy had just had an epiphany, by the way he was staring at her, his eyes wide with wonder. It was almost as though he had never even considered bothering with the reason why Hermione was upset over him getting another girl pregnant. The sudden realization hit him like a ton of bricks, the way Hermione had avoided him like the plague, the reason why she couldn't look at him without hurt and betrayal flickering across her eyes.

"I would kill him," Malfoy said softly, his eyes boring into Hermione's. "But still…"

"But nothing," Hermione said passionately, her tears flowing steadily. She wiped an angry hand under her nose. "I'm sorry that I can't forget what's happened, but I have other reasons, you know I have!"

"What?" Malfoy said, taking a miniscule step closer so that their robes were touching. Hermione felt a heat flare in her lower abdomen at their closeness. She hadn't been this close to him since their last encounter in the bathroom on the second floor. "What other reasons are you talking about?"

Hermione paled considerably, and let her mouth hand open like a fish. Almost before she could think of what she was doing, she raised her hands to cover her stomach. Malfoy narrowed his eyes as he noticed the action and a sneer graced his lips. The book fell to the floor with a thud though neither noticed it.

"You're pregnant?!" He roared grabbing her shoulders and shaking her slightly. "Why the Hell wouldn't you tell me? Instead you made me go through the worst month of my life with that _woman_ just because you didn't want me to know you were pregnant?"

"I thought that you would treat me just like _her_," Hermione whispered, tears hanging onto her eyelashes though none fell.

"Granger!" Malfoy said before leaning forward and placing a kiss on her lips. Hermione relished in the feeling. "You're so stupid!" Another kiss, this one more passionate and hard against her teeth. "You're so, so stupid!"

"I don't really appreciate being called-" Hermione began, her mind reeling from his kisses before Malfoy interrupted.

"I _love_ you, Hermione," Malfoy whispered, his grip on her arms tightening almost painfully. Hermione squirmed in his grasp but didn't get any response. "I love you so much, so much, you don't even know!"

"Malfoy, we don't really even know each other!" Hermione said, pulling away as he tried to kiss her again.

"We'll get to know each other, I promise, we just have to take things out of order," Malfoy said, pulling her into a hug and crushing her against him. Then suddenly he went stiff and pulled away, his hands on her shoulders once again. "What about Dumbledore?"

"What?"

"What will he do if he finds out?" Malfoy said. "He'll expel you for sure."

"I thought a Malfoy couldn't be associated with someone who didn't finish school?" Hermione asked.

Malfoy waved his hand dismissively. "I just said that so she wouldn't bother me anymore."

"But, what about my life?" Hermione asked. "What about university and a job and things like that?"

"Why would you want a job?" Malfoy asked as though the thought were foreign and stupid. "I can easily provide for the both of us, well the three of us, really."

"Wait, wait, wait," Hermione said, taking a step back and shaking his hands from her shoulders. "Who said anything about is being together?"

Malfoy deflated a bit, his shoulders slumping and his eyes dulling. "What?" He asked softly.

"Malfoy," Hermione said, crossing her arms. "I can't do it like this. I can't just _start_ over when there wasn't a beginning to start with."

"Hermione," Malfoy said, his eyes searching her hopefully. "Please, just give me a chance…"

She wanted to, she so desperately wanted to. But her heart and her brain were having an internal conflict. Her brain told her to tell him to fuck off and go on with her life, go through university and get a job, raise her baby in a peaceful, _muggle_ suburb. Her heart told her to jump in his arms to tell him that he could take her anywhere he wanted, just so long as he held her close and promised to always be good to her and their baby and never cheated on her. But she didn't believe that he could be monogamous, even if he desperately wanted to.

"Draco," Hermione said bitterly, hating the emotional turmoil he was putting her through. "I can't."

Instantly, Malfoy's eyes darkened and he pulled away. Hermione's heart contracted painfully.

"Why can't you just believe me?" Malfoy asked, stumbling over the book that had fallen between them.

"I don't know!" Hermione wailed, tears falling again. She wiped them away angrily, mad that she seemed to no longer have control of her emotions. "Malfoy- can you even be monogamous? Can you only love one person at a time?"

"I've only ever loved you, Hermione," He said. Tentatively, he brushes the tips of his fingers over her cheek, wiping away the moisture. "I promise you, I won't let you down. Please, just trust me."

Hermione swallowed loudly and lowered her head, staring at his feet instead.

What to do? She had always followed the more logical part of her conscious, but now felt so out of place without Malfoy, that she desperately wanted to open her mouth and say, "Yes, I'll believe you, I'll trust you." She couldn't. Her pride was in the way. Her damned Gryffindor pride.

"If I give you a chance," Hermione began, looking up at him through her lashes. "You have to know that I'll leave you, no matter how much I love you, the moment I hear of you being with another woman."

Malfoy smiled broadly, moving forward to kiss Hermione. Quickly, Hermione raised her hand and pressed her fingers to his lips; Malfoy frowned.

"I want to get to know you," Hermione said.

"Anything," Malfoy said against her fingers, his speech muffled. Taking her hand in his own, Malfoy leaned forward and kissed Hermione in a way that made her knees melt and her heart skip a beat.

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**A/N: OK, so I lied about there not being too much Hermione/Draco action in the next chapters. The story took a different turn than I had previously planned, and to be honest, this version is so much more better. And I think that you do too… Not that you know the horrible turn it was going to take…**

**OMG! If you haven't seen I Am Legend, then DO IT! Right now! I was iffy at first, seeing as to how I'm not a big Will Smith fan, but holy fucking cow was that movie the most amazing thing I've seen since Tom Felton graced my world in The Borrowers and then Harry Potter. I will admit though that I had no idea who the hell Tom Felton was when my mom brought The Borrowers home when I was eight… I just figured it out after Harry Potter came out… Go me. **

**Anyway- back on track. I Am Legend is AMAZING and a must-see.**

**Hope you liked the chapter and if there are any errors, I'm sorry because I'm too tired to go through it and fix everything right now. My God, this is long so I'm going to end with a pretty, please review:**

**--I've Got Another Confession to Make--**


	13. Beast of Burden

**A/N: I'm really getting into this. I like where it's going, and for once, it's all flowing together. Thanks for the many reviews! Keep 'em coming is all I've got to say: Also, I couldn't help but put in a quote from Tristan and Islode… See if you can find where! And there's a little bit of a fluff alert to mention.**

Chapter Thirteen: Beast of Burden

"What's your favorite color?" Hermione asked, staring up at the ceiling of his room, the sheets of his bed pooled around her stomach. His fingers were running lazily over her belly, tracing erotic patterns across her skin. She had to fight to squelch the feeling of what her body so desperately ached; her fingers itched to shove her short back down over her tummy, blocking him from touching her.

"Are you serious?" He asked, his fingers pausing in their movements. When he didn't receive an answer and Hermione started to turn away from him, he placed his hand flat on her stomach; he sighed as if in thought and finally said, "Green."

"Figures," Hermione said, smiling slightly, giggling when he propped himself up on one elbow and glared at her. "What?"

"You don't have to laugh," He said, lying back down and turning away from her. Hermione closed her mouth, but continued to giggle as she turned towards him and shoved at his shoulder, saying, "Don't be a spoilt prat, Malfoy."

Malfoy rolled over onto his back but crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her through narrowed eyes. "Fine, then what's your favorite color?"

"Purple," Hermione said, not daring to mention that it held a close candle to red, scarlet to be exact. The declaration of her favorite color only seemed to make Malfoy even more upset seeing as to how it had nothing to do with her house.

"You just said that so that I wouldn't make fun of you," Malfoy said, uncrossing his arms and sitting up slightly so that he was leaning over Hermione's form. She pressed her head further into her plush pillow, trying to keep her nostrils from breathing in his scent any more than was absolutely necessary.

"Malfoy-" She began only to be cut off by his lips crushing hers.

The need to be close to one another was palpable. It had been a month at least, since either of them had even touched romantically, and under Hermione's orders, he hadn't touched her except for the random kiss and the drawings on her stomach. She had warded off his advances down in the common room stating, and quite clearly, that she wanted to talk. As the sentence left her mouth, Malfoy immediately scowled and released her from his grip. "Where would you like this _talk_ to take place, then? The library?" To which Hermione promptly responded by smacking him on the arm and walked up the stairs to his room where he found her seconds later lounging across his bed. Thus the talk had commenced, so far covering territory about trivial things, like favorite food and favorite color.

But now, an hour and a half later of lying next to one another on a bed was becoming too much. Just brushing her bare feet against his sent tingles of anticipation down her spine, and judging by the way he kept gripping the sheets tightly in his hands every five minutes, it was apparent he was undergoing the same predicament.

Draco leaned in towards her and covered her lips with his own tenderly. It still amazed her that he could be so gentle, especially when he was so cruel to so many people. The fingers of his left hand took the hem of her shirt in his hand, easing it up over the rest of her torso, leaving her in sweet anticipation.

It continued agonizingly slow, this act of removing each other's articles of clothing until Hermione felt as if she could burst with expectancy. She kissed him with unbridled passion, and pressed her chest fully against his, relishing in the feeling of his skin, hot and feverish, on hers.

"Hermione," He whispered against her ear, his lips tickling the baby-fine, miniscule hairs on her ear lobe. A violent shiver ran down her spine.

He was poised just outside her, pausing for what, Hermione was unsure of. Malfoy kissed her neck, and sucked at the skin connecting her neck and shoulder as Hermione reached down and took the length of him in her hand, eliciting a moan from deep in his throat.

As he entered her, as far as he could, he paused again when he heard Hermione gasp. Pressing a kiss to her lips he was about to ask if she were OK, when she spoke before him.

Her eyes were searching, running over his face, as her hands clenched him to her, the nails of her fingers digging lightly into his back. "How many did you love before me?"

"None," He replied, bending to place a kiss to her lips. She spoke again before he could kiss her, mumbling against his lips as if unsure, "And after me?"

He smiled lazily and kissed her softly before answering her, "None…"

**-x-**

Hermione woke the next morning sore, but content. The sun was barely shinning through the thick curtains and the room was fast becoming uncomfortably warm. Kicking off the thick duvet, Hermione pulled the sheet up over the exposed parts of her body and heard a sigh from behind her.

"Now why'd you have to go and ruin such a glorious sight as that?" Malfoy said softly.

Turning onto her back, covers held tightly in her hands, Hermione fixed him with a playful glare and said, "Well, good morning to you, as well," before sitting up, pulling the sheet loose from the bed and standing, wrapping the sheet about her person.

"Where are you going?" Malfoy asked sharply, sitting straight up in the bed as Hermione walked across the room.

"I have to use the bathroom," Hermione said, turning and looking at him strangely.

Malfoy visibly relaxed and then a slight blush graced his pale cheeks as he leaned back against the headboard. Shaking her head, Hermione walked from the room, closing the door softly behind her. This pregnancy thing was really getting to her. It wasn't the very act of being pregnant, just merely the symptoms and even the way it had all come about. Her parents had always raised her to wait till marriage, to do the right thing, to not let a man think that he could walk all over her and use sex as a way to do it. It almost felt as though pregnancy were a way for her to get back what was hers (i.e. Malfoy), even if, at the time, she didn't want to admit it, and really, truly, and honestly hadn't though of it like that until later that night after they had made love.

Turning on the light to the bathroom, Hermione paused in her steps. She had hardly been through this bathroom in the past couple of months, since September, and now looked at the shower as though she had never seen it before. In her mind she could see herself and Malfoy cowering in the shower tub from McGonagall the morning she and Ron had stumbled upon Victoria Holloway and Malfoy. It seemed like a million years ago. Then, when the most she thought she felt for him were illicit lustful notions and a burning hatred.

Dropping the sheet from around her body, she reached around the curtain and turned on the faucet, giving it a minute to warm up before stepping into the steaming bath and standing under the torrent of water. Raising her hands she leaned her head back, allowing the water to soak her hair, raking her fingers through her hair, she allowed her mind to run adrift. To think of things that she had tried for so long to be under lock and key at the back of her mind.

What was happening to her? Who had she become?

Her thoughts turned to Ron; to the relationship she was supposed to have had with him. A part of her ached for that, that stability that she had always thought was in their relationship. But that was before Ron had cheated on her with Susan Bones; before Malfoy had begun a damned game of seduction that had gotten them into this predicament. Before Hermione realized, and quite suddenly, that stability was boring, and uneventful.

With these thoughts came a sudden lightheadedness, and Hermione had to sit on the ceramic bottom of the tub to keep herself from falling over. Perplexing as it were, tears began to fall from her eyes, mixing with the cascade of water that pummeled her from the shower head. Pulling her knees up to her chest, Hermione laid her head down on the tops of her knees and allowed the tears to fall.

Perhaps it was just the fact that at seventeen, she felt her life were already over. She'd had dreams, and still did, of attending school and getting a good job, of making something of herself before she settled down with a man and had a family to mix with it. Everything was happening out of order. Everything, it felt, was out of her control, spiraling down into an anti-climatic nothing that would forever be her life. She didn't want this. And as much as she hated to admit it, she didn't want to have a baby, not yet, not at seventeen.

The tears fell with vigor, coursing down her face and falling through her slightly parted lips, adding a salty taste on her tongue.

And then his hands were on her, running over her hair and pushing the thick, wet strands away from her face, smoothing away her tears. She hadn't even heard him come in, but should have expected it, knowing that as soon as he'd heard the shower, he would want to come and investigate.

"What's wrong?" He asked, his voice soft, but not as caring as she felt Ron's would have been. She relished in the thought that he didn't think her pathetic and soft. To him, she felt, she was strong, and moments like these were rare, and not to be drawn upon.

"Everything," Hermione replied, drawing away from his touch.

"OK," He said gruffly, standing and pulling the curtain closed again. Immediately she felt cut off, restricted, there but not, as she heard him walk across the tiled floor and, presumably, out of the room. Why did she have to say it like that? Why couldn't she have just told him? That everything was moving too fast. That she wanted to have a life _and_ a family? But not yet; in five, six, even seven years.

In a way, she supposed it were better that he hadn't pried the information out of her. It would have only made her more mad, and most likely slap him across the face for acting so uncaring, but then again, he _had_ just left her here in the bathtub, depressed and crying.

"Insolent bastard," Hermione whispered as she reached up and turned off the faucet before standing from her cramped position in the garden tub and yanking open the curtain. "Uncaring prick."

"Are you referring to me, or the other men in this room?" Malfoy's voice came from somewhere to her left. Hermione looked up startled, too surprised to even wrap a towel around herself. Malfoy was lounging on the counter of the bathroom, next to the door, which was cracked, letting in bursts of cool air from Hermione's sauna-like shower.

Taking a towel and wrapping it around herself, Hermione put her nose slightly in the air, and walked out of the bathroom past him, refusing to let him see that she knew she was wrong. Or slightly wrong. He could have done something, other than just leave her there, alone and crying. "Bastard," Hermione whispered vehemently as she opened the door to her room and slammed it behind her, walking over to the bed and falling upon it in a pile of wet hair and despair.

And as she lay there, her mass of brown hair soaking into the thick duvet, she couldn't determine which was worse: Crying alone with only one's own thoughts as company, or wishing, so desperately, for a caring embrace, one that made her feel like she were safe.

**-x-**

"I am afraid, Miss Granger, that trips back home during the middle of the school year are not permitted," Dumbledore said to Hermione, who sat across from him in a tall, winged back chair.

Hermione looked down at her hands, willing tears back, desperate for a reason that wasn't to rude to run out of the room without any more conversation with this man. Her stomach was somersaulting in her belly. The child in her womb, however small, she felt, pushing at each and every side of her cavity, trying to provoke Hermione into acting rashly.

"Oh," was all Hermione managed, her voice breaking at the end and a renegade tear trailing over the crest of her cheek and falling, slowly and deliberately, to her lap, splashing on her folded hands.

"Are you alright, Miss Granger?" Dumbledore asked, concern leaking into his voice. He leaned forward in his seat, peering at her intently over his spectacles. "Is there something that you would like to talk about?"

And there it was again; that twisting and turning of her gut, willing her to throw up and expel the dirty, horrid truth. That she was pregnant. That she was no better than Daphne Greengrass or any other of Malfoy's conquests. That, in all reality, she was just another notch on a bedpost that happened to capture the twisted, cold and mangled heart of her captor. This all seemed relatively easy in her mind, in a depressing way, and could have come easily, slipping over her tongue and through her lips like honey to the Headmaster. How a girl can be tempted and seduced when a man so ardently tries.

"Miss Granger?" Dumbledore prompted, brow furrowed in worry.

"I- Well, I…" Hermione began, glancing up at Dumbledore and then back at her hands. "I just miss my family. I've felt… for so long, that my life is coming to an abrupt stop and before I can move on, I must settle something with my family."

Dumbledore's face erupted into a fury of lines as his furrowed brow deepened and his lips pursed in thought. "I would have to consult your Head of House on this, and also, of course, the Head Boy to make sure that this leave of absence, will not affect the process of things. What do you think of that? And then we will see how things evolve from there."

**-x-**

_**2 days later…**_

**-x-**

Hermione stuffed articles of clothing pell-mell into her overnight bag, her head giddy and light with the permission of Dumbledore and McGonagall for her to visit her parents over the weekend. The only set-back was that in the three hours that she'd known was that Malfoy was no where to be seen. As soon as permission was granted, he turned tail and walked away, fading into the streams of students till it was Hermione could do to quit calling his name like an imbecile and move on to their common room, hoping beyond hope that he was there.

But he wasn't.

The commons were empty and smelt stale, as though it had been empty for quite some time, almost every surface shining with a thin layer of dust. Hermione swallowed hard at the harsh quietness that enveloped her, wrapping her arms firmly around her body as a shudder shook her frame. And then she snuck into his room and stole one of the pillowcases from his bed, replacing it with another tucked away in a drawer. It was the first thing she packed, folding it neatly and placing it at the bottom. Perhaps it would be the only thing to remind her of him while she gone.

It was only two days. Two days of recuperation and a deep heart-to-heart with her mum. Change of scenery would do her well.

It had to.

**-x-**

After Hermione had left, Malfoy turned to the corridors, roaming aimlessly, his head up in the clouds. Before, when he was still on the prowl for women and midnight escapades, he would have paid more attention to where he was going and who he was passing along the way in hopes of another conquest.

But not now.

It scared him at times to think of how drastically his life had changed. Here he was, seventeen, with a girlfriend with child and anther girl who was carrying his other child. This was fucked up and too much for one person to bear.

He acquiesced that Hermione needed to leave, to clear her mind and set things straight. Maybe when she came back, they could move on in their relationship.

His wanderings found him in the library, wandering the rows of shelves, almost-smiling to himself when he envisioned Hermione sitting at a table, excitement in her voice over some fact for a paper. The way her eyes would light up.

"Draco."

Looking up, he almost swore that Hermione was there, standing in front of him, clear as day, despite the fact she was in London with her parents. And then he blinked, and the illusion faded and Daphne Greengrass stood before him, shifting her weight from side to side.

"Daphne?" Draco said surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"I need to talk to you, to tell you something," Daphne said, averting her gaze and staring instead at the floor. "I figured you had the right to know."

"Know what?" Draco asked, a bit apprehensive.

The words that came next out of Daphne's mouth washed over him, provoking an unwanted emotion. He almost felt fit to burst with rage when the full extent of her actions weighed in on him. And then silence. And those expectant eyes staring up at him with hope.

"Why would you do that?" Draco asked finally, his voice a whisper.

Daphne looked around them, and raised a hand to brush a layer of dust from one unused shelf. "I know what she means to you. Everyday since that night I've wished that you would just turn and see me like you do her. But I know now, and part of me always did, that that will never happen, no matter how hard I wish it."

"I don't understand what you're trying to say," Draco said, his voice still dropped at a whisper.

Daphne looked him straight in the eye and took a step closer. Draco straightened his spine rigidly as Daphne brought her face close to his and lightly pressed her lips against his cheek.

"It was no longer your burden to bear."

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**A/N: No- Draco and Daphne do not get back together. Yes the next chapter will explain what happens. I had to get this chapter out there. It's like an itch I just couldn't get rid of until it was done. So I hope you liked it and that there weren't any errors because it's past midnight and I'm insanely tired.**

**Please, please, please review! I'd love you forever for it!**


	14. A Breath of Fresh Air

Chapter Fourteen: A Breath of Fresh Air

Word spread like wildfire through the halls of Hogwarts, even spilling out beyond the walls and put into words for their parents to read and gossip about. The horrors of an abortion. The Greengrass's ignored the rumors, stating, and quite certainly, that their daughter would never do such a thing as become pregnant in the first place.

If only they knew.

Daphne was the one who finally confirmed their nightmares by sending them a letter, telling them that at one point she had been pregnant with Draco Malfoy's child and that after much deliberation, she decided that having a child at seventeen was unheard of and had decided that an abortion was the best route.

Three hours later, at dinner, a howler landed in front of Daphne Greengrass and before she could run for cover in her dorms, it exploded in a fury of red paper and screamed at her in a combination of her mother and father's voice.

"**HOW DARE YOU DESTROY THAT BABY! DON'T YOU REALIZE WHAT WE COULD HAVE DONE?" **Her mother screamed before being drowned out by her father.

"**WE COULD HAVE HAD AN ALLIANCE WITH THE MALFOY'S AND FINALLY DOUBLED OUR WEALTH! YOU STUPID BINT! DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT COMING HOME!"** Her father screamed, his voice cracking in several places from his rage.

The hall was so silent, a pin drop could have been heard. The howler destroyed itself before bursting into flames, igniting a wave of whisperings from the students. Daphne sat in her seat, tears coursing down her cheeks as she stared at the small pile of ash that had at one point been screaming at her.

Even Draco felt sorry for her, as he looked down the Slytherin table at the girl who was being alienated by her house mates. There was a gap all around her, leaving her in perfect view of everyone in the hall. But as horrible as he felt for her, he couldn't bring himself to do anything for her. His ass was glued to the bench, forbidding him to stand at any and all costs, scared beyond belief that he would walk up to her and offer condolences, only adding fuel to the fire of incredulous rumor that Malfoy and Hermione were just having sex for the heck of it so that Malfoy and Daphne could get married later without the worry that he would have affairs during their union.

Finally, Professor McGonagall stood from her place at the Head's Table and practically ran down the raised dais to the Slytherin table, yanking Daphne up from her seat and out of the Great Hall. The hall exploded in loud excited whispers.

Idly, Draco wondered when Hermione was coming back so that he could get his mind off of things.

**-x-**

Hermione sat rigidly in one pf the plush armchairs in her parent's sitting room. She wished Draco were here to hold her hand and push her along.

"What was it that you wanted to tell us?" Mrs. Granger asked, rearranging a stack of magazines on the coffee table. "It must be important seeing as to how you couldn't say it in a letter."

"Hmmmm," Mr. Granger said from where he sat, his eyes glued to the telly and a game of football. At Mrs. Granger's slap to his knee, he jumped, nearly spilling his drink and said gruffly, "What?"

"Perhaps you could turn off the TV and listen to your daughter, who you hardly see as it is," Mrs. Granger said in a voice that left no room for argument. Hermione desperately hoped that she wasn't going to be like that.

Mr. Granger turned off the TV and glared at his wife's turned head.

"Now," Mrs. Granger said happily, crossing her legs at the knee and clasping her hands together. "What was it that you wanted to talk about?"

Hermione swallowed thickly. She could do this. She could tell them that she was pregnant, that she loved the boy who lived to torment her and lo and behold, it was his baby! It wouldn't sound desperate. It wouldn't make her seem like she fell down three flights of stairs and bumped her head _really_ hard and suffered brain damage.

Her parents despised Draco Malfoy, having heard all the stories Hermione relayed at the end of the school year. And now it was safe to say that they wouldn't like him anymore then before for having corrupted their daughter, forget the fact that Ron Weasley had beat him on that one.

"Hermione?" Her father asked, looking at her as though he had just noticed her presence. "What is it?"

And before she had time to butter coat it, she said, "I'm pregnant."

Silence followed this declaration, as she had expected. What she hadn't expected was her mother bursting into tears three minutes later and her father standing and walking out of the room where he could be heard stomping up the stairs and distantly, a door being slammed.

"Mum?" Hermione said softly.

Mrs. Granger wiped at her eyes and ran a shaky hand through her hair. "It's just such a shock! I mean, I thought that your father and I had always taught you to wait and get married first…"

"I didn't mean for this to happen," Hermione said quickly, feeling incredibly stupid.

"It's Ron, right?" Mrs. Granger asked, her eyes lightening with the prospect of having a son-in-law that she was fond of.

Hermione's heart began to pound under her breast. The child in her womb kicked against the walls of her uterus. "No, Mum, it's not Ron."

More silence. And then, "Why not?"

"He cheated on me, Mum," Hermione said. "We broke up, almost three months ago."

"How far along are you?" Mrs. Granger asked, as if hoping she could point out that the baby was indeed Ron's.

"About a month and a half," Hermione said. "I know who the father is, and no, there's no possible way that it's Ron."

"Well, then who is it?" Mrs. Granger asked, her voice raised slightly.

"You know him, or of him at least," Hermione said.

"Is it Harry? He's such a nice boy!" Mrs. Granger said, brightening again.

"No, Mum, he's dating Ginny," Hermione said quietly.

Mrs. Granger's brow came together. She looked around the room as if this mysterious boys name would be written on the yellow striped wall paper. And then it seemed as though she were hit with a brick. She shook her head in disbelief.

"Not that horrible boy you always talk about! What's his name, Drago?"

"Draco Malfoy," Hermione said just as her father came back into the room.

"That horrible bastard?" Her father said. "How could you? He's treated you like shit since the moment you walked through those doors!"

"Daddy," Hermione said softly, tears welling up in her eyes. She wrapped her arms around her mid-drift and leaned forward so that her chin rested on her knees. Desperately, she wished that Draco were here to hold her and whisper in her ear that everything was alright. "Do you hate me?"

This was followed by immediate rebuttals. "Of course we don't hate you!" "How could we hate you, Hermione? You're our baby!"

"Let's just forget about this for now and have some dinner!" Hermione's mother said, standing and walking into the kitchen.

"Daddy," Hermione said, standing and catching his arm. "You need to promise me something."

"What?" He said softly, looking down at her hand holding his arm.

"Promise me you won't tell anyone."

"Why?" Hermione's dad asked suspiciously.

"Because I won't be allowed to continue school if they find out. They'll expel me and make me come back to take remedial lessons after I have my baby," Hermione said quickly, her hand gripping her fathers arm tightly. "Please, Daddy."

"Hermione-" Mr. Granger started.

"Please, Daddy," Hermione said again, tears welling in her eyes.

"Hermione, I'm not too sure that you don't need to suffer the consequences of your actions," Mr. Granger said, pulling out of Hermione's grasp and ignoring the sob that escaped her lips. "I can't just cover every bad thing that happens to you in your life, Hermione. We all make mistakes, and for that, we must take what comes with those mistakes."

Hermione sank back into her chair, pulling her knees to her chest and sobbing into the fabric of her jeans.

"I am sorry, Hermione," Mr. Granger said, placing a hand on her hair and stroking the soft stands.

**-x-**

Dinner was a sordid affair. Hermione's mum sniffled every five seconds and her father ignored the both of them as he destroyed his piece of chicken breast. It was awkward and filled with long pauses as Mrs. Granger tried to inconspicuously ask about Malfoy.

"So, how has your school year been? Your friends and _all_ that?" She asked, forking a row of peas into her mouth.

"Fine," Hermione answered evasively. She shoved morsels of food about her china plate, squelching the feeling that she needed to throw up.

"Hermione, you really need to eat," Mrs. Granger said, looking up through her thick brown eyelashes. "I hope that the father of your child at least makes you eat something."

"He doesn't really make me do much of anything," Hermione replied. "Everything is done willingly."

Mr. Granger tossed his fork down onto his plate and stood from his seat suddenly causing the female occupants in the room to jump in their seats. "Enough."

"John-" Mrs. Granger started, her hand to her heart.

"I said _enough!_" Mr. Granger yelled, dropping the fragile plate into the sink with a clatter and turning to his wife and child. "If you want to ask questions about _him_ then do it when I'm not around!"

John Granger stomped out of the room without a second glance towards either of them and seconds later, the slamming of the front door echoed throughout the quaint sized home.

"I'm sorry, dear," Mrs. Granger said, looking down at her plate and mimicking her daughter's previous actions. "It's just hard is all, what with never having even met this boy."

"Mum-" Hermione began only to stop once her mother raised a hand in the air, signaling her to close her mouth.

"Hermione, you don't know what's its like, not yet, to see the person you molded into what you thought was a perfect human being do something that was not only quite unexpected, but also something that's so… sinful, I guess is the only word for it," Mrs. Granger said as she held her head in her hands, rubbing her fingers in circles on her temples. She sighed heavily and stood from her chair. "I don't hate you, Hermione. I don't want you to think that your father does either, he just doesn't know how to deal with things like this. You should have seen what he did when I told him I was pregnant with you. Anyway, the point is that I want you to know that I love, and nothing will diminish that. Now, I've said my piece, and unless you want to talk about it, I won't ask nor pry."

Hermione couldn't say anything. Tears welled up in her eyes and leaked down her cheeks. Her mother turned away uncomfortably and put her plate gently in the sink before coming back for the rest of the dishes. Hermione stood roughly from her seat, causing the chair to squeak across the linoleum floor as she threw herself into her mother's arms and sobbed into the collar of her shirt.

Her mother's arms wrapped protectively around her and Hermione sobbed, is possible, harder as the full weight of her predicament rested on her shoulders. For the first time in so long, Hermione felt as though her world were righted; that she were a little girl again and that she could do nothing wrong.

**-x-**

That night as Hermione lay in bed, she couldn't help the lonesome feeling that crept up on her. She wrapped her arms around her belly and pulled her knees up to her chest, trying not to think of how in a few months she wouldn't be able to even see her feet and have to have Draco put her socks on for her.

The horror….

She felt like crying and then anger swept in for the notion that she'd cried almost nonstop for the past three days.

"Christ," Hermione murmured into her pillow, jerking out so that she was lying flat on her stomach. Again, another thing she wouldn't be able to do in a few months.

"This sucks balls, this sucks balls, this defiantly, sucks balls," Hermione mumbled under her breath to the dark room.

"What sucks balls?" Came a voice to her right and in the surprise that someone had broken into her room, Hermione screamed bloody murder and fell off the bed in a tangle of sheets.

"Lumos!" Came Draco's voice, his wand illuminating the room. "Are you OK?"

"What the bloody hell are you doing here?" Hermione whispered, her voice hard as though she were restraining from screaming at him.

"I just wanted to see you…" Draco said, his shoulders slumping. "I was lonely."

There was a pounding on her door and Hermione motioned for Draco to hide. He looked around the room wildly and finally dove under the one-foot gap between the floor and the box spring, shimming under the bed with a grunt.

"Hermione?" Her dad's voice rang through the wood. "What's going on in there?"

Hermione ran across the room and wrenched open the door to find her father falling forward into her as though he had had his ear pressed against the door in a desperate move to hear whatever he could.

"Daddy," Hermione said. "I just had a nightmare is all. A really horrible one that someone had broken in through my window and was staring at me over my bed…."

"Oh," Her father said looking into the room. "Are you OK?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Hermione said, stepping back a bit so her dad could see more properly into the room. She glanced at the bed to make sure parts of Draco's anatomy weren't in view.

"Well, Hermione, there's actually something I wanted to say to you," John said, coming into the room. He walked over to the bed and sat down heavily. Hermione could have sworn that she heard a groan. "I just wanted to apologize for having been so cross earlier and acting like a child."

"It's OK, Dad, really," Hermione said, shifting awkwardly on her feet.

"Are you really OK?" John asked, looking strangely at his daughter.

"I feel like I'm going to puke actually," Hermione faked, holding a hand to her stomach and bringing one to her face. "It's really bad at night, this sickness and everything."

"Oh," John said standing from the bed and walking across the room. Hermione could almost hear Draco sigh with relief. "Do you need any medication or anything?"

"No, I'll be fine. I just need to sleep it off…" Hermione said walking up to the door and closing it slightly. "See you tomorrow, Daddy."

"Night, sweet pea," John said, walking down the hall. Hermione watched him walk into his room before she closed the door and locked it.

"You can come out now," Hermione said to the expanse of her room.

Draco burst out from underneath her bed, groaning and breathing hard. "Dear Merlin's saggy left testicle! Was your Dad a _hippo_ in another life?!"

"What are you doing here, Draco?" Hermione asked, choosing to ignore the insult on her father's _healthy _weight and crossed her arms tightly over her chest, catching his attention with the use of his given name.

"You never say my name."

"I say your name all the time."

"No, you don't."

"Yes. I do."

Draco shook his head and stood up from the floor. He walked the three measly steps towards her and placed a hand on her cheek, warming her without real knowledge.

"You don't say my given name as much as you call me Malfoy," Draco said, absently rubbing his thumb over her bottom lip. "Say my name."

"Is this some sick-type of foreplay to get me to do _extra_ things, because it's not going to work," Hermione said, looking up at him with her holier-than-thou stare. Draco sighed and kissed her on the lips softly.

"I'm not even in the mood, or I wasn't until you mentioned that and gave me a full-on mental picture. I just wanted to hear you say my name," Draco said, holding her face in his hands.

Hermione narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Her foot tapped lightly on the floor. Draco resisted the urge to step on his pregnant girlfriend and sat on the bed.

"Forget it," He said, falling back on the bed and covering his eyes with his palms. Hermione sighed and let her arms fall to her sides.

"Uh, fine! Draco. There, now are you happy?" Hermione asked as she walked up to him and leaned over his form on the bed.

"Nope! It's too late!" Draco said dramatically, peeking at her through his fingers.

"Draco, Draco, Draco, Draco, Draco!" Hermione said, crawling onto the bed and straddling his waist. She leaned down close to his ear, feeling the heat of his skin and his beating heart as she whispered his name as seductively as she could in his ear, "Draco."

**-x-**

"What was wrong, John?" Sara asked her husband as he came back into the room.

"She said it was just a nightmare," John said, removing his robe and laying it across the end of the bed. As he slid under the covers, his furrowed brow did not fade.

"What's bothering you?" Sara asked as he turned off the light and settled next to her in their bed.

"I could have sworn that there was someone else in there with her," John said. "I heard him…"

"There's a _man_ in Hermione's bedroom?" Sara asked, sitting up and staring down at him as though he were crazy.

"Yeah," John said slowly, pulling the covers up to his chin. "Weird thing is though, is I think Hermione _wanted _him in there."

"Do you think it's the father?" Sara asked excitedly, lying back down next to her husband and pulling the covers over her. "Oh, I want to meet him!"

"Calm down!" John said, listening hard in the direction of the door. "It's my personal advice that you go no where near that room until Hermione herself has come out."

Sara furrowed her brows and sat up listening as well. And then she heard a giggle. And a man's laugh. And a creak.

She plopped back down on the bed and said loudly to block out the thought, "What happened to my innocent little baby?"

"I think she was corrupted," John said pulling the covers over his head. The muffled reply made Sara hit him with a pillow repeatedly. "It's your fault! You're the one who wanted to let her go to this school of weirdo's and pedophiles that take innocent, sweet girls and corrupt them into sex fiends!"

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**A/N: I know it's a strange ending… I thought that as I was writing it. But it's the best I can do right now since I'm kind of slipping into the curse known as writer's block. I think I can over come it this time. It's a fight worth battling. **

**As always, review…**

♥ **Kelsey**

**Also, if there's any grammatical errors, just ignore them. I'm too lazy right now to go back and fix them:**


	15. A Passage of Time

**A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. I'm glad that it made most of y'all laugh; it makes me happy to see that my writing can do that: And here is the next installment. Enjoy!**

Chapter Fifteen: A Passage of Time

Hermione sighed audibly as she met Harry in the entrance hall of Hogwarts, her bags clutched tightly in her hands. He looked sad and angry, the emotions flitting across his visage in waves, one right after the other. His brilliant green eyes boring into her, taking in her tired, disheveled appearance in stride, settling a little longer than what was comfortable on her stomach before he too sighed and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Hermione," He acknowledged, cocking his head to the left in his pose of thoughtfulness and wonder.

"Harry," Hermione returned in greeting, her feet beginning to ache. She hoped that no one would happen upon them at that moment as they stared at one another. The handles to her bag began to weigh heavily in her hands, the rubber grips digging into her palms.

Taking long strides, Harry strode up to her and took the larger of the two bags from her hands and said quite forcefully in a way that left no room for argument, "We need to talk."

She couldn't deny the fact that their lack of communication was indeed a plight in both of their backsides and reluctantly followed him up the staircase, past the hall for her own common room and up the stairs to the seventh floor and the Room of Requirement. Harry paced three times before the expanse of wall and stopped as a door materialized before them and he opened the door, motioning for Hermione to enter before him.

Looking down at the floor, Hermione passed by him and entered the dark room. Immediately, a fire burst into life in the huge grate that took up most of one wall and illuminated two arm chairs set at angles on its hearth.

"Sit," Harry said, setting the bag in his hands on the floor. Hermione did the same and took the closer of the two chairs, leaning forward slightly to hide the small rounding of her stomach. She felt like crying and hated herself for it. Hermione Granger was not weak and damn it all if a pregnancy made her into a wuss.

"You're pregnant," Harry stated and Hermione looked up at him curiously.

It hadn't been that obvious had it? That Hermione had indeed had an illicit affair with one Draco Malfoy, resident Man-Whore of Hogwarts.

"How-?" Hermione began only to be cut off by Harry.

"It was rather obvious to a best friend, Hermione," Harry said, relaxing deep into his chair, his fingers steepled before his face in a very Dumbledore like movement. He sighed and a tea service popped into existence on a table between the two chairs. Harry poured two cups and fixed the tea exactly to Hermione's liking before handing the cup to her wordlessly and settling back into his chair, taking thoughtful sips from his own cup. "I know that most women have this notion that men are ignorant to women's needs. We aren't; not really. Women just skirt around everything and make things so bloody complicated, saying they don't want something when in truth they do and becoming angry when we don't get it for them anyway. I'm not stupid Hermione. I know what's been going on between you and Malfoy."

"How?" Hermione reiterated. "I thought that no one knew… That we were being careful."

"Maybe to the rest of the school you were, but Christ, Hermione, we're best friends, or we were!" Harry said loudly, clunking his cup back onto the table. "I know you better than you probably even know yourself! I know when something's wrong! I can tell that you're different!"

Hermione didn't say anything. She replaced her cup gently on the table and placed her hands over her belly, protecting her baby, it would seem to others, but really squelching the desire to vomit her breakfast onto the hearth.

"Have you heard?" Harry suddenly asked, holding his head in the palm of his left hand, his eyes trained on her.

"Heard what?" Hermione asked, thoroughly confused with the turn of conversation.

Harry sighed heavily. His shoulders sagged with the weight of his words. "It's about Daphne Greengrass."

Hermione immediately perked up. "What about Daphne Greengrass?"

"She had an abortion," Harry said suddenly, looking at her strangely. "You mean Malfoy didn't tell you?"

Hermione thought back on their night together. He hadn't said much of anything to be honest, but had only proceeded in claiming her as his again before drifting off into sleep next to her. She felt anger well up in her throat at the prospect that he had had the perfect moment to tell her himself and never even muttered a word about it. In fact, now that she thought back to it, he had avoided all talk of the wizarding world, much less Hogwarts.

"No," Hermione said vehemently. "He didn't say a word about it."

Harry looked uneasy. "Look, I didn't mean to make you angry at him. I just thought that you already knew about it. It is Malfoy, right?"

"Of course it's Malfoy," Hermione said sharply looking up at him again. "Who else would it be? Ron?"

"You know he didn't mean what he did, Hermione," Harry said obviously referring to his other best friend. "He can't control his emotions; you know that better than anyone."

"Harry, you weren't there that day," Hermione said, reflecting back onto the moments after Ron had first broken up with her and found her kissing Malfoy on the floor of her bathroom. How long ago that seemed. "You didn't see the look in his eyes when he said those things to me, whether he meant it or not, or whether the both of us said those things just out of spite and anger."

"Ron's irrational and says many things that he regrets later on," Harry said, always the mediator. She was briefly reminded of the day he had taken her here to tell her about Ron cheating. And now he wanted to know why she hated him. It was too much. Too ridiculous.

"Are you trying to get me to _forgive and forget_ what Ron did? No matter how much he may regret it, I can never forgive that!" Hermione said, bringing her hand down roughly to exact her point.

Harry looked at her, his eyes squinted in thought.

"Hermione," he said finally, leaning forward in his seat and clasping his hands together. His face was resolute, his eyes slightly condescending. "Aren't you being just a bit hypocritical here? You did the exact same thing. You cheated on Ron. You just didn't go as far as Ron did. You _both_ are at fault, Hermione, and you know it."

Her breath caught in her throat and her palms began to sweat. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have been such a _hypocrite_? Hermione Granger wasn't anything related to the word, or so she had thought. She had always believed that she judged fairly and rationally and with all knowledge and a clear mind that held no truth behind.

How stupid she was. How utterly stupid and pathetic.

She stood quickly from her seat and strode across the room, taking both bags in her hands before turning back to Harry.

"I'm sorry," Hermione said softly. "For everything."

Without giving Harry the time to respond, Hermione opened the door and walked from the room and back towards her common room.

The portrait sneered at her, having never really taken a liking to the Head Girl and swung open slowly, allowing her admittance. He wasn't there; she had known in the back of her mind that he wouldn't be waiting for her. Malfoy's didn't wait for anyone.

She trudged across the common room and up the stairs, pausing on the landing to stare sullenly at the door to his room. Chewing on the inside of her cheek, Hermione turned on her heel and walked down the small hallway to her room. Closing the door softly behind her, Hermione turned the lock, resolutely shutting herself off from him.

**-x-**

Draco stumbled back into the common room, three hours after Hermione was scheduled to have returned to Hogwarts. The common room was empty as was the bathroom. He made his way up the stairs to the landing and looked at her door. There was a soft light radiating under the frame, illuminating the cream carpet of the hall.

Walking across the hall he pressed his ear to the warm wood of Hermione's door and listened as a song wafted through the wood. He couldn't tell if Hermione was in there or not.

Placing his hand on the door knob, he tried to open the door and found that it was locked. He took out his wand and whispered the unlocking spell he'd learned as a child before most anything else. He tried the door again and found it still bared to him.

"Hermione?" Draco called through the wood. "Hermione, I know you're in there."

He banged on the door once, forcefully, with his fist and tried the knob again, fruitlessly. "Hermione, come on!"

There was a slight shuffling sound on the other side of the door and Draco continued to turn the knob, almost believing that if he tried hard enough and long enough, it would open. It was Malfoy reasoning that kept him from realizing inanimate objects didn't do as told.

"Hermione, open the damn door!" Draco called, pounding on the door again, this time giving it four swift bangs that once again went unnoticed.

"I can hear you moving in there!" Draco called out and instantly all noise stopped as if Hermione had frozen where ever she had been standing. "And I'm not stupid! I know you're in there no matter how still you are!"

Suddenly, the door was wrenched open, and Draco having lost balance, fell straight on his bum only to find himself staring up at a fuming Hermione Granger.

"Finally!" Draco said standing and brushing off his robes.

"When were you going to tell me?" Hermione asked, crossing her arms over her chest. Her foot began to tap on the floor as she looked up at him before adding, "Or were you ever going to tell me?"

Draco felt his stomach drop to the floor with a sickening thud. Great. He knew this was going to happen. He should have just told her the moment he was given the opportunity. There was no telling how long she was going to keep this over his head, or even if she'd speak to him during his enduring punishment of silence.

"Ok," Draco started, holding his hands up before him. "Look, I know that I should have told you last night, I know that, but I just didn't want to talk about Hogwarts and all this shit that's happening. Can you blame me?"

_Yes,_ Hermione felt like saying, even if it was just out of spite. But when she thought about it, she realized that no, she couldn't blame him for wanting to forget about everyone here at Hogwarts. She relaxed her arms, but kept them around her body. Her foot ceased its incessant tapping and Draco looked at her in wonder.

"You're not mad?" Draco asked, thinking that it was too good to be true.

"Oh, no, I'm mad," Hermione said. "I just understand why you did it."

"Did Potter find you?" Draco asked, hoping that he was stepping into safe territory.

"Yes," Hermione replied icily. Her eyes lit up in anger and Draco felt like turning away and running into his room, somewhere, anywhere, to keep him from enduring Hermione's wrath, which had doubled in strength with her pregnancy. Just as soon as her anger had come, it was gone and Hermione fell against him, clutching him to her in a desperate hold. He couldn't understand the girl. "What are we going to do?"

"What do you mean?" Draco asked, loosely wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin atop her head.

"You know what happened with Greengrass," Hermione said. "If she hadn't had an abortion, she would have been expelled! I can't be expelled from Hogwarts! What am I going to do then? Stay home and _knit_?! I can't have a job; I can't do anything to earn myself money! I'm completely useless!"

"Hermione, would you shut up already?" Draco asked rather gruffly as he grasped her shoulders and pulled her away so that he could look her in the eye. "No one is going to find out! For all we know, you won't be giving birth until after we graduate! And my god, why would you need money when you have me? Maybe you _should_ take up knitting… I've heard it's very therapeutic, and you need something calming, that's for sure."

Ignoring the slight insult incorporated at the end of his speech, Hermione glared at him and said, "Who even said that we're going to be together after Hogwarts?"

"Who said we weren't?" Draco countered.

Hermione bit her tongue, knowing that she was being unfair. Draco's grip on her shoulders loosened and he pulled her back to him, encasing her in a hug that comforted her greatly.

"Stop acting like I don't love you," Draco whispered in her ear. "Stop trying to find excuses for us to not be together. We'll figure something out; we're both smart, we'll come up with something that'll work." 

Hermione just nodded her head in agreement, suddenly exhausted.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Daphne," Draco said again. "I just didn't want to talk about it and didn't think it was really all that important at the moment."

"It's OK," Hermione said, leaning farther into him and pressing her nose against his robe, inhaling his scent deeply. "I don't care anymore."

**-x-**

The days melted into weeks and the weeks into months. Before Hermione knew it she was showing and Draco was casting daily concealment charms on her belly as she continued to grow and grow. They took monthly trips to "Hogsmeade" that were really secret trips to St. Mungo's Maternity Ward where Hermione underwent normal pregnancy treatments.

It was also where she found out she was carrying twins; a boy and a girl. And where Draco promptly fainted at the news and had to be placed on a bed next to her as Hermione shook her head and rubbed her belly with tired hands.

Easier than they had thought imaginable was the way no one at St. Mungo's even thought twice about Hermione Granger's pregnancy with Draco Malfoy's babies and agreed to enter a vow of secrecy. Not a word was breathed to anyone else in the hospital. The only ones who knew were Draco, Hermione and her OB/GYN. It helped that Draco was bloody rich and could pay them for their silence.

No one at Hogwarts suspected a thing, as far as they knew. Dumbledore never called her to his office. McGonagall never questioned why Hermione whipped out food in the middle of class and devoured it in two bites and Harry never said anything about it when questioned. He helped Hermione out when Malfoy wasn't in their classes, even carrying her bag for her while she tried to walk normally with a huge, albeit invisible, beach ball growing on her stomach.

To everyone else, it appeared as though Hermione was merely walking with a melon between her knees, wobbling about the halls with a hand on the small of her back and hair pinned at the nape of her neck in a wispy bun. What one couldn't see, one wouldn't believe.

Harry and Draco had come to some sort of unspoken agreement. Harry would walk Hermione to the library/bathroom/Great Hall/classroom until Draco showed up and then they would either tolerate one another or go their separate ways.

At night, Draco grudgingly would massage Hermione's swollen feet and ankles lest he be screamed at about how it was all his fault she was in this position anyway. It wouldn't do well for him to mention that she was the one in fact who didn't take her birth control. He dreaded the moment the actual birth took place. Not only would Hermione be a right bitch and scream obscenities at both him and the nurses but he could just imagine the amounts of physical pain she would induce on him with whatever she could get her hands on.

It was at night when they were lying in bed that Hermione relaxed and laughed, just so long as Draco didn't comment on her huge belly or Hermione didn't try to roll over onto her side without assistance. The concealment charms made her look like she was just as normal as any other non-pregnant seventeen year-old girl. In reality, she'd gained close to forty pounds, a set of perpetually swollen ankles and a boyfriend that whined more than she did, causing her to be in a non-stop bad mood that was only remedied when she fell asleep.

Draco also became increasingly more petulant and cranky what with the midnight trips down to the kitchens and the constant doting that never seemed to benefit him in return. The only good thing he liked about Hermione's pregnancy, besides the fact that he was secretly excited about having kids, was that she always needed help showering. At first she hadn't said anything, just left the bathroom door unlocked and hoped that he would come into the bathroom, which was ingenious on her part seeing as to how Draco couldn't keep away from her when it involved water and nakedness, forget the fact that she was pregnant and had thus been employed to help Hermione whenever she "asked" for it. He always got something for that, since Hermione would never admit that she needed his help and thanked him in whatever way she could, sometimes forfeiting her comfort just to ensure he would keep helping her.

"I miss sex," Draco stated one night as they lay in bed.

Hermione glared at him for mentioning sex especially in the state she was in, all whale-like. Draco looked over at her through the corner of his eye from where they lay side-by-side in his bed. Suddenly, he was leaning over her, working his body around her belly.

"Don't even think about it," Hermione said, folding her arms over her chest.

"Why not? Plenty of couples make love while pregnant!" Draco argued.

"Yes, and I'm sure not all of those couples look like beached whales!" Hermione cried indignantly, her eyebrows furrowing together into a V over her eyes.

"Maybe so," Draco said, removing her arms from over her breasts and deftly undoing the buttons to her night shirt. "But you're my beached whale…"

**-x-**

"Sleep well?" Hermione asked innocently, sipping from a cup of steaming coffee.

Draco glared up at her from the black velvet sofa in the common room and stood up, taking his pillow and blanket and stomping up the stairs to his room.

"Just peachy!" He yelled down the stairs at Hermione's form before he slammed the door.

Hermione smiled into her mug and settled down on the sofa still warm from Draco's presence. She laughed quietly to herself and tucked her legs up under her. Oh, she loved being pregnant…

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**A/N: Hope this is to y'alls liking! There are only a max of five chapters left in this story and then there's a sequel which I'm already beginning to formulate in my mind. **

**Review pretty please!**


	16. Discovered

**A/N: I can't believe this story is almost over… I've grown so attached to it. Even though there is going to be a sequel, it just won't be the same, I think…. Whatever. I'm just being a cranky author. :**

Chapter Sixteen: Discovered

"I still don't see why I had to sleep on the couch," Draco mumbled as they sat at the end of the Gryffindor table. Harry was looking down the table at Ginny, trying to act as though he wasn't there listening to this conversation. "You could have just gone back to your own room or let me sleep in there."

"Oh, stop it," Hermione said as she buttered a piece of toast and wiped her hands on her napkin. "It's not like it killed you."

"Well you could have given me some reason as to why I was being so brutally kicked out instead of screaming your head off and throwing books at me," Draco said, taking a bite of his eggs, his face set in a scowl.

"If you honestly don't know as to why I kicked you out last night, then the male race really is a lost cause," Hermione said, ignoring the fact that at the moment she was surrounded by males.

"Actually, Hermione," Harry said, unable to stay quiet. "I don't think you girls realize just how hard it is to figure out just what the hell you're saying. Or not saying…"

"Thank you, Potter," Draco said, tossing down his fork and giving Hermione his "Beat that!" stare. It was needless to say that the Head Girl wasn't paying an ounce of attention to a word either of them had said.

"I kicked you out last night because you called me a beached whale," Hermione said just as Ginny sat down next to Harry, placing her plate on the table with a clang.

"Why would you call Hermione a beached whale?" Ginny asked incredulously, peering around Harry at Draco. "She's so thin, she's almost anorexic."

Hermione furrowed her eyebrows at the comment. "I am not anorexic."

Harry and Draco both scoffed at the comment, having seen Hermione numerous times in the fully pregnant state. Immediately, they both dug into their food with the looks both Hermione and Ginny were giving them. Rolling her eyes, Hermione shared a look with Ginny that clearly said how stupid men were and both tucked into their food.

Harry and Ginny were conversing easily with one another, their voices hushed as they leaned close to one another. Draco was still acting like a petulant child and Hermione was eating a bit of everything on the table before her.

"Hermione?"

Hermione turned suddenly, as easily as her stomach would allow her and looked up at Ron. She scowled and asked sharply, "What?"

Draco, Harry and Ginny were looking between the two with a mixture of apprehension and slight anger on Draco's part, as they watched the two look at one another.

"I was just wondering if I could talk to you," Ron said softly looking at the other three at the table. His eyes met Harry's and the latter nodded his head so slightly, one had to ponder if the action had really happened.

Swinging her legs over the bench and standing slowly on her feet, Hermione followed Ron out of the Great Hall, well aware of the stares they were getting from every occupant they left behind. Once they were in the Entrance Hall, Ron walked over to a more secluded corner and waited for Hermione to make her way over there, beads of sweat breaking out over her upper lip.

"What do you want, Ron?" Hermione asked, her voice much softer than she had been aiming for. Her talk with Harry was still weighing on her mind; her acts as a hypocrite burning as tears in her eyes.

Ron didn't say anything at first and it was in those moments that Hermione realized just what about him it was that she loved about him. His tall, lean frame and his red hair that made his blue eyes seem to pop from beneath his dark lashes. Raising a hand to his lips, he pulled at his bottom lip, a nervous habit that made Hermione want to reach up and take his hand in her own to keep him from doing it. Restraining the urge, Hermione crossed her arms over her chest.

"Ron?" Hermione asked taking a step closer to him.

"Look," Ron began looking around the Entrance Hall and then finally back to Hermione, his blue eyes shinning. "I know that what I did was stupid and cruel and can never be forgiven, but, Hermione I have to tell you that no matter what has happened, I still love you. I always have loved you. And I know that by cheating and going behind your back I lost your trust and even your love, but I'm so sorry. I want to be your friend again, and maybe one day, I want you to be mine again… I want you back Hermione…"

"You want me back," Hermione stated softly, looking up at him through narrowed eyes. "Where did this come from?"

"What do you mean?" Ron asked crossing his own arms over his chest and looking down at her. "You can't honestly mean to tell me that you don't think about me at all."

Hermione felt like telling him exactly that seeing as to how what with her pregnancy and the odd barrage of emotions that came along with it, she had hardly given any thought to Ron Weasley. She rarely saw him and when she did it was in passing in the halls, were he ducked his head and continued walking briskly in the opposite direction.

"Ron, it's not that," Hermione said looking around the vast room and blinking rapidly to hold back tears.

"Then what, Hermione?" Ron asked tossing his arms up in the arm and bringing them back down to his sides so that his hands slapped the sides of his legs.

"Too many things have happened, Ron," Hermione said looking up at him again, a lone tear falling down her cheek. Ron reached up and brushed it away, his fingers lingering a little longer than was necessary on her skin; Hermione didn't pull away. "Even if, by some chance, we were to get back together, who's to say that what with all the things that have happened, it would work? We've changed, become different people, maybe even in some aspects, better people. Ron I don't know what's happened, or if Harry has put this idea in your head that we're supposed to get together, but it can't be."

"Why?" Ron asked vehemently. "Because of _Malfoy_?"

"He's something to do with it," Hermione whispered.

"Apparently, he's everything these days to you! Why is that, Hermione? Has he got you wound around his pinky finger, just the way he wants you? Has he told you that he'll love you forever and never leave and provide everything you need at a moments notice?" Ron was near to yelling now, his face inches from Hermione's.

Her heart beat in utter turmoil. Here was Ron, who albeit was hot-headed and irrational at times, was sweet and caring, and still obviously loved her passionately.

"I may not have all the money he does and summer homes in France and Italy or God knows where, but there's something I can give you that he never could," Ron said, his voice softening as he reached out and cradled Hermione's face in his hands.

"What?" Hermione whispered, her voice cracking as tears spilled down her cheeks only to be wiped away by his long fingers.

"I could give you love, Hermione," Ron said softly, gripping her head tightly and yet softly so that she wasn't in pain. He pulled her closer. "I could give you a family and comfort in ways that Malfoy doesn't even know."

"Why are you doing this to me?" Hermione asked, her hands reaching up to cover Ron's on her face. "I was fine, more than fine, and then all of a sudden you and Harry both start making me think that maybe I am supposed to be with you… I can't deal with this right now, I can't handle-"

Hermione stopped mid sentence as a pain gripped her belly. It started just under her navel and spread across her abdomen and lower backs in a spasm so great she could hardly stand. Falling to her knees and bringing Ron with her, Hermione cried out in pain as the contraction swelled in magnitude and then faded.

"Hermione?!" Ron cried, clinging to her and holding her worn body up with his own. "Hermione, what's wrong?"

Unable to speak, Hermione cried fitfully into Ron's robes as another contraction hit her and she doubled over in pain, wrenching herself away from Ron who stood and began running back to the Great Hall screaming "HELP!" over and over at the top of his lungs.

Students spilled out into the Entrance Hall as did all the professors present. Dumbledore knelled beside the Head Girl and smoothed tendrils of hair from her face. "Miss Granger? Can you hear me?"

"Yes!" Hermione wailed as another contraction hit and she felt a liquid rush out of her and down her legs. "They're too close! Way too close!"

"Too close?" Dumbledore asked looking down at the Head Girl. He pulled out his wand and pointed it at her before saying _Finite_ and the concealment charm hiding Hermione's pregnancy disappeared. There was a collective gasp from the students as Draco burst from between two fifth year Hufflepuffs, followed closely by Ron, Harry and Ginny.

"Miss Granger?" Professor McGonagall whispered as she took a step closer to the Head Girl. Professor Snape rounded on Draco Malfoy who cowered beneath his penetrating stare. Ron and Ginny gasped in surprise when they witnesses Hermione's form, her rounded belly, jutting out into the air. Dumbledore turned to Professor McGonagall.

"Send Potter and the Weasley's to St. Mungo's; everyone else needs to return to class."

"Albus," McGonagall said. "What is going on?"

"Miss Granger has gone into labor."

**-x-**

Darkness enveloped her.

Silence deafened her ears.

Pain was finally absent from her frail body.

It felt as though she were simply walking through a black abyss, without any worries. No boyfriends, or babies, or grades, or parents. There was simply her and her body and this solid ground neither hot nor cold beneath her feet.

Almost as soon as she grew accustomed to her dark world, it was yanked away and she blinked her eyes blindly, staring up into a harsh white light. People were walking about her talking to her and to others in the room. Someone was gripping her hand so tightly she couldn't feel her fingers.

A pain shot through her lower abdomen and her sex, ripping at her skin and she screamed and screamed and someone hushed her and then she was in darkness again.

Blissful darkness.

She sighed and continued walking through her dark world as though she hadn't been so forcefully ripped away just seconds before.

Time was flying past it seemed. Or maybe it was crawling snail-like by her. She couldn't tell. All she was aware of was that her body was thin and any sign of a baby were absent. She smiled down at her body and ran her fingers over her flat stomach.

Laughing gaily, she lay down upon the ground and stretched her arms over her head before falling into a deep slumber.

**-x-**

"Miss Granger? Miss Granger, can you hear me?"

"What…?" Hermione asked as though waking from a deep coma. Her eyes hurt. Her arms hurt. Her torso flared with pain. She didn't even want to think of the pain that gripped her sex and groin.

"Miss Granger, I need you to open you eyes and please, try not to move," came a woman's voice to her right. A cold hand pressed to her forehead as Hermione stilled her body but continued to roll her head.

"Open your eyes, please, Miss Granger," came the nurses' voice and Hermione's eyes snapped open, only to close again with the harsh light. She eased them open and squinted around the room until her gaze landed on the nurse and she looked deep in her eyes. The nurse sighed painfully and her shoulder's fell. "Miss Granger, there's been a complication."

"Complication?" Hermione murmured, looking about the room at the nurses who were bustling about, cleaning things up with their wands and avoiding all eye contact with their fellow nurse who was now grasping one of Hermione's hands in her own.

"Yes, a complication," The nurse said. Before she bit out, "With your babies."

"What's wrong with my babies?" Hermione asked looking at the nurse with shadowed eyes.

"It was very early, Miss Granger. Doctor Hughson is still trying to determine what exactly caused you to go into labor."

"Where are they?" Hermione asked, her voice shrill. She attempted to sit up, but was immediately thwarted by the nurse who pushed her shoulders gently down so that she was lying on the bed.

"Your son was very weak and small," The nurse said, sitting on the edge of the bed and keeping one hand on Hermione's shoulder. "It is typical for one twin to gain the most nutrients, causing the other to be smaller and weaker. We are certain that had you carried them full term, he would have survived. However, he was also very agitated in the womb and thus was wrapped in the umbilical cord."

"He's dead?" Hermione asked softly.

The nurse looked down at her, sighed again and then said, "Yes, he was stillborn."

"And my daughter?" Hermione asked.

"She's in intensive care. She's weak as well, but has developed her lungs fully and is expected to progress nicely. If you like, I can bring you to her?" The nurse asked looking down at Hermione who was in too much shock to cry for her baby.

"How long will she be there?" Hermione said as she looked around the room wishing for a familiar face.

"That depends, Miss Granger, on how well your daughter develops and gains weight. I cannot give you a exact answer."

Hermione nodded her head and lay back on her pillows, "When can I see her?"

**-x-**

She was tiny and red. She had what a cloth shaped like sunglasses over her eyes and her little chest rose and fell rapidly as she thrashed her arms and legs around in her incubator. Hermione's heart swelled at the sight of her. Nora, the nurse whom had been with her since she had awoken, pushed Hermione's wheelchair up close to the tiny box and backed away.

"My baby," Hermione whispered as the little girl turned her head towards the sound of her mother's voice and ceased wailing. Sticking her hands in the two holes in the incubator, Hermione touched the child's chest and nearly jumped in surprise when her daughter gripped her finger tightly in her tiny hands.

"Why is she so hairy?" Hermione asked, turning to Nora who stood at attention just behind her. "I thought it fell off in the womb?"

"It does, normally, but again, you didn't carry her to full term," Nora said. "It'll fall off within a few days."

"Oh," Hermione said, turning back to her baby and staring in fascination at the tiny infant.

"Have you thought of a name for her yet?" Nora asked.

"We've discussed it, but haven't settled on anything," Hermione said, eyes locked on her daughter.

"We?" Nora asked her face masked with confusion.

"Yes, her father," Hermione said turning and looking at her. "Didn't he come?"

"Two men and a girl came, maybe it's one of them," Nora said. "Two redheads and Harry Potter."

_Of course she recognized Harry_, Hermione thought before she said, "No one blond came along? He's pale and has pointy features…"

"No, I'm sorry, but I don't remember seeing anyone of that description," Nora said. "I'll go and check for you, alright?"

Hermione nodded her head and turned back to her baby, names running through her head like a speeding freight train.

"Oh, Hermione!" Came Ginny's voice, and Hermione had barely enough time to turn and see her flaming red hair racing towards her before she was enveloped in a hug and the wind was knocked out of her. "Hermione why didn't you tell me?! I would've helped you!"

"I thought that you were angry at me?" Hermione said weakly as Ginny released her and started to preen over the tiny baby who was crying again in the incubator.

"Oh, Hermione, she's adorable! And she looks exactly like you!" Ginny cooed, jutting a arm into the incubator and rubbing her fingers over the child's belly.

Ron and Harry stood uncomfortably in the doorway, only moving in completely when Nora shoved them in. Dumbledore and McGonagall trailed behind the nurse and Hermione found herself hoping that he had just got lost in the labyrinth of halls in the hospital. And then Nora bustled out and closed the door behind her.

"Miss Granger, how are you feeling?" Professor Dumbledore asked and Professor McGonagall nodded her head in agreement, her face drawn in compassion.

"I feel OK, I guess," Hermione said.

"I'm sorry to hear about your son," Dumbledore said softly and everyone in the room murmured their agreement. Tears welled into Hermione's eyes for the first time as she thought of her little baby boy she hadn't even seen, but felt moving within her.

Ron and Harry moved up to the incubator and stared down at the baby girl who was calming under Ginny's touch. Ron stared down at the girl with trepidation and a bit of anger towards Malfoy for not being there.

"Miss Granger, I'm afraid we need to discuss your terms of enrollment at Hogwarts," McGonagall said softly, pushing Hermione in her wheel chair away from the other three and around to Dumbledore who was sitting on a stool. "Things need to be decided."

Hermione felt faint as she was wheeled over to Dumbledore. She knew what was going to happen; it'd already happened to Daphne Greengrass and suddenly she felt a great admiration for the girl for what she had done, no matter what she felt on matters such as abortion. Daphne Greengrass had done what she felt was the best for herself and now had the option to make something of herself.

"Hermione, it pains me to do what I have to do," Dumbledore said looking at her over his half-moon spectacles. "I've watched you grow and learn and become a better woman and witch. However, there are a few… rules… that were laid down by the founders and are out of my hands as to whether or not I can override the fact of you staying at Hogwarts. You understand what this implies, correct?"

"Yes, I do," Hermione replied.

"I believe that you've overheard the stipulations given to Miss Greengrass?" Dumbledore asked, his piercing blue eyes reaching right into Hermione's soul. She couldn't lie and so she nodded her head.

"Everything will work out, Miss Granger," McGonagall said, patting Hermione's shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah, right…" Hermione said looking over at her friends crowding her baby's incubator. "Everything will work out…"

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**A/N: Wow. The entire chapter kind of surprised me as I was writing it, but I went with the flow and like how it turned out, especially since this turned out better than the first version of chapter sixteen I had written. **

**Plus, I have a surprise ending coming together!!!! And you're not going to like me for it, but get you'll get over it when the sequel comes out:**


	17. Come Together

**A/N: Only three more chapters to go after this one! Lots of things are going to happen [not all of them will make you happy, but in the sequel, things are all going to fall back into place! **

**As always, I hope that this will not cause some of you to not read the rest of the story, and the sequel for that matter, and that you will LOVE the story anyway, despite the way it may or may not end.**

Chapter Seventeen: Come Together

He never came.

For three straight nights, Hermione lay awake in her hospital bed, the light from her daughter's incubator illuminating the room as she waited for him to come waltzing through the door, some excuse at the ready for as to why he hadn't been there. And Hermione knew with all her heart that she would forgive him.

That was before she was released, and still, he never came for her or their baby.

Professor McGonagall sent Ron to St. Mungo's daily with homework assignments, and her school things, and each day, with every visit, Hermione found herself leaning more and more into him, taking comfort in his warm body and the feel of his large hands on her back and arms.

It was more than the fact that Ron and her had a shady past, that they had hurt one another purposefully, whether it be conscious or not. It was that he smiled and made her laugh. That he held her baby and didn't condemn her for being Malfoy's. That he was sweet and charming, and also that he _tried_ so hard to win her affection back by simply being there for her and helping her in whatever ways he could. He wasn't some phantom that had at one point existed and then with a puff of smoke vanished into the night; Ron was there, always had been there, and always would be there. There were some bonds that time and people couldn't break: Hers and Ron's was testament to that.

**-x-**

"Have you thought of a name yet, Hermione?" Ginny asked on one of her rare, allowed visits to the hospital. "It's been ages since she was born."

"Yeah, Hermione, she can't be 'Baby Granger' for the rest of her life," Ron said, leaning over his sister and peering down at the tiny girl.

"You mean she doesn't have Malfoy's name?" Harry said looking at the pink name-tag and reading for himself the baby's identification. "I thought-"

"She's not getting anything more from that scum-bag than his DNA," Hermione muttered under her breath as Nora came in and whispered to the former Head Girl that it was time to feed.

"What's happened?" Harry asked, turning away when directed, along with Ron, as Ginny cradled the tiny infant in her arms and brought her over for Hermione to nurse. She laid a blanket over Hermione's exposed breast before telling the boys they could turn around again. "Hasn't he been to see you and the baby?"

"What do you think?" Hermione asked, wincing as her daughter latched on and began to nurse. "I've been thinking of names for her."

"What are they?" Ginny asked, perching herself on a chair close to Hermione and looking out the closest window at the crowd of people surging through the streets below them. She turned back to Hermione, and waited expectantly for her to continue.

"I was thinking something like Grace… Or Hope," Hermione said softly, biting her lower lip in thought. "But then, I don't know…"

"I like Grace," Ron suddenly said, blushing slightly when Harry turned on him and gave him a strange look. "What?" He asked gruffly, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"That would be pretty!" Ginny contributed.

"I just think it sounds weird saying it," Hermione replied, switching her baby to her other breast. "Grace Granger. Doesn't that just sound…. Funny?"

"Maybe," Ginny said evasively before sharing a look with her brother and smirking. She quickly turned away from Harry and Ron, still smirking, before turning back to the window. "Maybe she won't be a Granger for too much longer…"

"Ginny!" Ron and Harry both admonished, their faces slightly angry.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Hermione asked roughly, looking at Harry and then Ron, who held her gaze steadily and finally to Ginny who still wore a smirk on her lips. "What are you hiding from me?"

"We weren't hiding anything," Ron said, kicking at his sister who dodged his blow and laughed. "One of us was going to ask you something, until their sister decided to go ahead and spill the beans!"

"I didn't spill anything!" Ginny said, holding up her hands. "_You_ were the one who mentioned that _you're_ the one who's going to be asking something!"

Ron opened his mouth to retaliate, then snapped it closed, his ears flushing red. "You ruin everything, Ginny."

Hermione looked down at her baby, mentally calling her Grace in her head, bouncing her slightly in her arms. The tension mounted as Ginny and Ron continued to bicker in hushed tones.

"I'm sorry, Hermione," Harry said from beside her. Hermione looked up at him, plastering a smile on her face, "For what?"

"For Malfoy… For being thrown out of Hogwarts, I know that must be hard," Harry supplied. "I know what it means to you to have a good education. But… I'm going to be here for you. We all are."

"Thank you, Harry," Hermione said as the smile slid off her face. She looked down at Grace and then stood. "Will you take her?"

Harry looked skeptical but held his arms out none-the-less and rocked Grace when Hermione laid her in his arms. Quickly, she buttoned her blouse and then turned to the two feuding siblings, shaking her head.

"I need to go for a walk," Hermione announced to Harry, who eyes widened.

"You can't leave me here with her," He indicated towards the infant who began to cry and flail her arms out of her blanket. "I don't want to accidentally kill her!"

"You won't kill her, Harry," Ginny said, breaking out of her argument and walking up to him. "I'll stay with you. Ron, you should go with Hermione."

Ron narrowed his eyes at his sister, but followed Hermione without any reluctance out of the room. They walked in silence down the hall and a couple of flights of stairs until they came to a set of doors leading out into the Hospitals gardens. A pair of nurses were strolling with an elderly woman being pushed in a wheel chair. Patients in white dressing gowns were sitting on benches placed sporadically throughout the flowers. Ron pushed the door open and allowed Hermione to slip out before him.

"I hate this," Hermione said suddenly, once they were out in the sunshine and walking down the pebbled path. Ron glanced at her from the corner of his eye but didn't reply to her sudden proclamation. "I hate having to keep her here, I hate him for doing this to me, and mostly I hate myself…"

"Why do you hate yourself?" Ron asked.

"Because everything is so messed up. Me. You. Us. Him. My baby," Hermione summarized. "Hogwarts. And even though they are letting me continue out of school, it isn't the same. It's not like I'm actually learning, but just doing work, and I hate that. I hate not knowing what's going on with people my own age, when it happens. And I really want to know what happened to Malfoy."

"He hasn't been at school," Ron supplied, looking fully at Hermione now. "Otherwise, he'd probably be here as well."

Hermione looked up at that. "Why would he be here? No one is forcing him to come and see me or Grace."

"Perhaps not, but he'd be here because Harry and I would have beat him to a bloody pulp."

Hermione laughed at that, feeling slightly better. She looked at Ron, the smile still on her face. He grinned back at her, before the tops of his ears turned red and he looked down at the ground, kicking at the tiny rocks. "Are you going to go home to your parents?"

"I think so, I mean, it's not like I really have anywhere else to go," Hermione said, crossing her arms and lifting her face towards the sun. "I don't have near enough money to support us."

"You could always come to the Burrow," Ron said. "I know Mum would go mad with joy having another baby in the house for her to coddle."

"I appreciate it, but I couldn't," Hermione said, stopping in the middle of the path, just below an elm tree. "I couldn't do that to my parents, or to yours."

"Why?"

"Because, it's going to be hard enough having a baby without having to wake up at all hours of the night because she's crying, or hungry, or something, anything, I don't know."

"Maybe it'll be easier, with people there to help you," Ron said, reaching out and cupping Hermione's face in his hands. He rubbed his thumbs lightly over her bottom lip, before running his fingers through her bushy hair. "I want to be there for you. In everything."

"Ron," Hermione whispered, feeling tears well up in her eyes. "Why? Why are you doing this?"

"Because I love you," Ron stated vehemently. "I've always loved you, and I always _will_ love you. Please, try to trust me again."

Hermione didn't respond, but looked into his eyes steadily, searching for any sign that he was bluffing. Ron's blue eyes stared back at her pleadingly, virtually exuding the truth in his words. Biting her lower lip, Hermione looked away, causing his hands to fall away from her head.

"I'm not going to promise you anything," Hermione said and Ron's eyes dulled slightly. He nodded his head as though expecting the worst. Hermione reached up and cupped his cheek in her right hand, catching his eye. "But I'll try."

Ron smiled brightly before leaning down and capturing her lips with his own. Hermione was surprised by the feeling that pooled in her stomach. She was even more surprised when she found herself deepening it and circling her arms around his neck. The need for human contact was strong. It was easy to believe that Ron had been Malfoy all along. Especially when Ron was the one who was holding her in his arms, as though he'd never let go.

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**A/N: ** ** I know that this chapter is short. But it said what it needed to, and I didn't really feel a need to drag out what isn't really there. Hopefully the later chapters will be longer, but, like Hermione said, I make you no promises.**

**Review mon amies!**

**--Kelsey—**

**AKA**

**--I've Got Another Confession to Make--**


	18. Strawberry Fields Forever

Chapter Eighteen: Strawberry Fields

_Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see._

_It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out. _

_It doesn't matter much to me._

_Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields._

_Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about._

_Strawberry Fields Forever…_

_--John Lennon_

Three months later, Hermione found herself standing in her old bedroom, Grace tucked carefully into her arms and her school trunk sitting on the floor beside her. Her parents weren't yet home.

The bus ride from St. Mungo's to the small neighborhood of Hermione's parents was an embarrassing experience. A pair of older ladies had preached to Hermione the consequences of pre-marital sex, calling Grace an abomination and practically yelling at the bus driver to kick her off the bus: Sinners weren't allowed to live as normal people, in their eyes.

Although, Hermione knew deep in her heart that what they were saying wasn't true, that they were just being rude and impractical, the words stung- bringing tears to her eyes and causing her to quit the ride three blocks too soon. The air was chilly and Grace began to cry immediately, once the cold air hit her exposed face and hands. All in all, the walk had been tiring and made Hermione wish that someone, anyone, were there to help her.

And now, standing in a room that was once made for a eleven year-old, with a baby cradled in her arms, was enough to make her cry all over again. Tears fell hot and thick down her cheeks, falling onto Grace's face, causing the infant to wail once again. Dragging a hand over her face, Hermione bounced the girl lightly in her arms and went over to the bed, forcing that night last spent with _him_ from her mind and sitting carefully on the edge of the patchwork quilt her mother had made when she was just a babe.

Grace continued to cry, shaking her tiny fists in the arm until Hermione forced a pacifier in her mouth, shushing the child instantly. Making a shushing noise with her mouth, Hermione rocked her daughter in her arms, until Grace's lids dropped closed and the pacifier fell from her lips.

Hermione was about to lay her on the bed when the front door slamming and her mother's voice floated down the hall. She was laughing and talking to someone Hermione couldn't hear, her footsteps fading into another room of the house. Situating her daughter in her arms, Hermione left her room, wandering down the hall, towards the sound of her mother's voice and finally into the kitchen, where she found her mother leaning against the counter in her scrubs fixing a cup of tea. Her back was towards the door as she threw her head back and laughed energetically, revealing a tiny black mobile pressed to her ear.

"Hello, Mum," Hermione said evenly, watching as her mother spun around, sending her cup of tea across the counter where it toppled into the nearby sink and broke with a clatter. Sara Granger dropped her phone from her ear and ran to her daughter, crushing her in a hug and waking Grace.

"Oh, Hermione!" Sara exclaimed, holding her hands to her mouth as tears gathered in her brown eyes as she took in her granddaughter. "She's so beautiful! Why didn't you tell us you had given birth?"

To be honest, Hermione had forgotten about mentioning to her parents that they were indeed grandparents to a healthy baby girl. She opened her mouth to respond, but it would appear that Sara had already forgotten as she was lifting the screaming girl from her own daughters arms and smiling at the infants beet-red, tear-streaked face.

"She looks just like you!" Sara exclaimed, cradling her in her arms and humming softly to her as Hermione leaned against the door jam and folded her arms across her chest. "Where's the father?"

Hermione swallowed thickly, pressing her lips into a tight line and turning her eyes towards the lone window situated above the sink. "I haven't seen him since the day she was born. He didn't come to the hospital. Not at all."

"Why ever not?" Sara asked, swaying her upper body from side to side, giving Hermione a penetrating stare. "Did you two get into a fight?"

"No, that's the whole problem. We didn't get into anything!" Hermione said, throwing her arms up into the air to emphasize her point. "One minute he's right there, standing by my side and the next he's God knows where, doing God knows what!"

"Sara?" Came John's voice from the front door. "Is that Hermione I hear?"

"Yeah, Dad, it's me," Hermione called back, never moving from her spot, even after her dad entered through the door connecting the living room to the kitchen. He smiled warmly at her and held out his arms to embrace her.

"Your stomach's gone!" John exclaimed, patting Hermione's thinning waist with one of his large hands. "Where's the baby?"

"With Mum," Hermione said, a smile on her face, as she pointed to her mother who had never looked more relaxed as she did with a baby in her arms.

John walked across the kitchen and cooed at the infant. "She looks just like you!"

"Yes, so I've heard!" Hermione said with a small laugh. Sara looked over at her in concern as her husband took their granddaughter into his arms. The two women shared a look, relaying things that Hermione would never say out loud, whether or not her father was present. Sara sighed before turning back to her husband and the newest addition to her small family. When she turned back to say something to her daughter, she found her gone.

**-x-**

She told herself at night, as she lie alone in her bed, as tears pooled onto the white pillowcase, as Grace stirred in her crib, that she was going to be fine.

It was easy to pretend.

Easy to tell oneself that the shit happening was imaginary. That the living breathing baby lying not more than ten feet away was simply a doll. A doll that moved and ate. That had needs. An imaginary doll that you didn't give twenty-three chromosomes to, that didn't latch onto your breast and nurse off the milk you made, especially, for her; a baby, who's father was a ghost, a phantom limb that ached somewhere near your heart and gripped at a part of your soul you thought didn't exist.

Yes, it was easy to pretend.

Even easier was to lie in bed for hours into the morning, staring at the wall and pretending you didn't hear your baby crying. Easy to close your eyes as tears fell and your mother came into the room, mumbling under her breath, only to take your infant in her arms and slam the door in her wake as she made her way back to bed.

What wasn't easy was to wake up in the morning. To open your eyes to a new day. A day to spend alone.

There should have been someone there. _He_ should have been there, to hold her, and to love her, for having given him a beautiful girl. _He_ should have been the one to wake up in the middle of the night and cradle his daughter in his arms, holding her close to his heart; to never let her go.

But he wasn't.

He wasn't there. He didn't tell her he loved her in ways other than words. He didn't see his daughter: Stand over her crib and watch her as she slept. To look into her silver eyes and see how beautiful she was.

Letters were sent to her daily. They sat in a pile, neatly, on the corner of her white desk that she had outgrown when she was thirteen. Her knees hit the top of the table; it was an easy way to cut herself off.

She never read them, just looked at the name of sender. If it wasn't him, she didn't even bother. Just added it to the already growing pile of unread, unanswered, letters from friends, who eventually, she hoped, would stop trying.

"Hermione," Sara said one afternoon after she found her daughter sitting in an almost catatonic state on the edge of her bed, gripping a pillow to her chest. She had tried talking to her, at least once a day, since her daughter had drifted into this state of depression. "You can't keep doing this Hermione."

"Doing what?" Hermione's voice was scratchy, her eyes dull when she turned to stare at her mother. "I'm not _doing_ anything."

"My point exactly!" Sara exclaimed. "Your daughter needs you! I have a job, your father has a job! We can't keep taking time off to watch _your_ baby because you think ignoring her will solve your problems! And for Christ's sake answer all those damn letters from your friends! They care about you! You can't be alone in the world, Hermione! People don't survive on their own. You need _someone_."

**-x-**

That night, she answered every letter. She made them sound happy and energetic and made up lies about how she had been so busy with Grace that time just seemed to fly by; like she hadn't even noticed that four months of her life had suddenly disappeared. It didn't even seem unlikely to her that everyone would know that she was bullshitting. She knew they would. She expected them to.

And the next morning, when she opened her eyes, she pushed the numb feeling back down, pretending it wasn't there. She feed Grace and took a much needed shower. And after she dressed both herself and her baby, she went for a walk, breathing deeply, pushing the stroller before her with a sense of purpose, like it was her lifeline. It felt nice to feel alive: There wasn't a need to hide here, not when she was home.

She even invited Ron and Harry and Ginny around during the Easter holidays, and smiled far more than was necessary. Her face hurt by the end of the day, and even Ron was able to pick up on the distressing fact that something wasn't right.

"Mione, are you alright?"

"I'm fine Ron," more smiles that didn't reach her eyes.

"I'm not stupid, Hermione," Ron countered, placing dishes into the sink, giving his hands something to do. "I may not notice a lot of things, but not when it concerns you."

Hermione bit her lip, lowering her gaze to the Formica countertop and running weary hands over and over the tan counter. "I know that Ron. I know."

"What's wrong, Hermione? Why have you changed?" Ron folded his arms over his chest, no longer trying to hide his gaze from her. "You're like a stranger. It's like I've never known you."

"It's amazing to find," Hermione began, turning her tearful eyes to Ron, "that inside us all is a stranger. One we've never known is there. I never knew fear, Ron. I thought, that people who had fear were weak, lesser people. People who were afraid to walk home alone; women, afraid of their own husbands; people afraid of white powder in their mailboxes. Fear could never touch me.

"And then it did. It's amazing to find that inside me is a person I never knew existed. A person who is so selfish, it hurts," Ron opened his mouth to speak, but snapped it shut when Hermione held up a hand. "It's not fair of me, to have this little girl, one that I, at most times, don't even want. She didn't ask to be born, didn't ask for me as a mother. I'm just trying to pick up the pieces and keep moving. Keep breathing, and eating, and living."

**-x-**

Ron stayed for the rest of Easter, welcomed back into Sara Granger's arms like the prodigal son. And every day, it was easier to make the smiles just a tiny bit more real. To play with Grace on the floor, and hold her in her arms like she wanted her there.

"When are you going back to school?" Hermione asked Ron one night after she had put Grace to bed and had joined him in the living room, sitting closer than normal on the couch.

"I don't know, Hermione, if I'm even going to go back," Ron avoided her gaze as he said this, fearing the retribution that would be in her eyes.

"What do you mean, you're not going back?" Hermione asked, leaning away from him, shrinking into the corner of the couch. "Do you even realize how great it is to even _be there_?"

"Hermione, I know what you think-"

"How the hell do you know what I think?" Hermione asked vehemently, standing from the couch and pacing before him. "Nobody knows what I think, just like I don't know what they think about!"

"Hermione," Ron said, standing as well and coming near her. He reached out to touch her, to pull her close to him. Hermione pulled away with a "Don't touch me!"

"Hermione, please, I'm not trying to make you mad. I just want, God, I just want-"

"What? What do you want? What does any one want?!"

"I want you to be mine, I want you forever," Ron said finally, dropping his hands to his sides and looking like a forlorn little boy. "I want you and I want Grace. I want so many things Hermione, but Merlin, you act like because Malfoy left you, _everyone_ is going to leave you!"

"That's not fair," Hermione whispered, backing even further away.

"He's not the only man in the universe! You think you can hide behind false looks and fake laughs? Wake up and smell the bloody roses! There are people here who care for you, who would give anything for you!" He indicated to himself, and then down the hall to her parents. "What more do you want? What more can there be but you and me and the people who love you? I may not be able to give you everything! But I can give you something. Quit running. Quit pretending."

It was as though he had thrown her into a tank of freezing water, submerging her in a Fountain of Truth and no amount of kicking could help her surface. She was stuck, with no way out, and with no place to run to. Here in the penetrating gaze of Ron Weasley, she was exposed for the person she had become. There was no way to hide now.

And so she did the one thing she knew would get him off her back. She walked up to him, ran her fingers over his face and through his hair before encircling her arms around his neck and kissing him passionately. He stiffened at first, before giving in, kissing her as though it were the one thing keeping him alive, circling about her tiny waist and pressing their bodies together so that one could not tell where one ended and the other began.

When they broke apart, Ron smoothed his palms over her cheeks, removing tears she hadn't even known she'd shed.

It was easy to pretend that what she felt for Ron was real, no matter how much she wished it were someone else.

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**A/N: Here's the next bit. Only two more chapters to go. **

**Thanks for everyone who's been faithful in reviewing for day one. It means a lot.**

**--I've Got Another Confession to Make—**

**P.S. **

**Sequel is going to be titled **_**Keeping the Moon**_**, so look for it once this fic is over. Or add me to your author alert list and you'll know when it comes out! ♥**


	19. Bravery is Deceit

**A/N: Tom Felton has an AMAZING voice! I just heard him singing the song he wrote, and bloody hell, it was good. Come on, we were all iffy on whether or not he **_**really**_** could sing, and now here's proof! You'll find the video on YouTube, btw. **

**Always,**

**I've Got Another Confession to Make**

Chapter Nineteen: Bravery is Deceit

_A year and a half later…_

"Hermione, are you almost ready? Where's Grace?" Came Sara's voice from down the hall. She sounded impatient and hurried.

Straightening from tying the laces of her trainers, Hermione grabbed her purse and picked up Grace from where she sat on the floor, playing with a set of blocks. Grace made a sound of disapproval, but clutched to her mother's shirt as they walked out of their room.

"I'm coming, Mum, jeez, calm down!" Hermione said once she walked into the kitchen where her mother was busying herself with a pile of dirty dishes. "Are we going to go now, or do you need to clean the rest of the house as well?"

"Quit acting like a petulant child," Sara replied, wiping her hands dry on a dish towel, before following her daughter down the hall and out of the house, where they clambered into the small, family car. She muttered under her breath as she fastened her seat belt, "We're going to be late."

"I know," Hermione replied, snapping her seat belt into the place and adjusting the strap more comfortably across her body. "Mrs. Weasley said she'd meet us at the dress shop at two-thirty. We'll be only a couple minutes late."

"Oh, I hate being late!" Sara exclaimed as she backed out of the drive and sped off down the lane. "I just feel so rude, walking into a appointment after it's been scheduled."

"I feel the same way, but we're already late and no amount of speeding will get us there faster mum," Hermione said, gripping the sides of her seat as Sara took a turn at hair-raising speed, narrowly missing a mailbox situated just on the corner. "Slow down, will you? The last thing we need is to get into an accident!"

Sara eased slightly on the accelerator, but immediately sped up again once they reached the motorway, weaving in and out of cars like a bat out of hell. Hermione closed her eyes as an old man honked several times and shook his fist at their car, having just missed a collision by swerving into the left lane. "Mum!"

"What?" Sara said, pressing the brake to miss rear-ending the vehicle in front of them.

"You're insane!" Hermione yelled as her mother cut across three lanes of traffic to exit the motorway, screaming at the people in the way through the window. Grace began to laugh in the backseat. "And you're teaching my daughter nasty habits! Next thing you know, her first words will be some curse word!"

"Quit exaggerating," Sara said nonchalantly, as though she hadn't just risked the lives of twenty different persons in her recent escapade of American NASCAR on British roadways. "Gracie won't say anything like that!"

"She will if you don't start acting like a normal person when you drive!" Hermione countered, turning in her seat to peer at her daughter who was gazing out the window, oblivious to the argument in the front seat. "Merlin, Mum, I think you need to retake your driving test!"

"I'm a perfectly good driver, Hermione!" Sara calmly stated, turning slowly into a parallel space in front of a dress shop and putting the car in park. Where it normally would have taken thirty minutes to get into town, they made it in twenty. She gathered her things together and exited the car, slamming the door behind her. Hermione sighed dramatically and followed her mum out of the car, before opening the back door and taking Grace from her seat. "Goodness, is that Molly? She's gained some weight hasn't she?"

"Mum!" Hermione hissed, opening the door to the shop. "Shut it!"

"Hermione! Sara!" Molly said, coming towards them with her arms spread wide to grasp them in a hug. "And how's Grace?"

Grace bowed her head in shyness and raised a hand to her mouth, sucking on her thumb. She smiled around her finger at Molly though when the older woman continued to talk to her, giggling madly when she was subjected to a hearty tickle from her soon-to-be grandmother.

"Hermione Granger?" a tall, stately woman asked, coming towards them, teetering on towering red stilettos. She had platinum blond hair, wrapped in a tight French twist and a smooth, pale face that reminded Hermione of her Headmistress from her muggle school.

"Yes?" Hermione asked, readjusting Grace on her hip. The woman's eyes narrowed and she appeared to be biting the inside of her cheek.

"This way," She said finally, turning on one tall, pointy heel and marching over to a back section of the store, blocked off from the rest of the store by white panels, similar to what Hermione had seen in an Asian restaurant. "I've taken the liberty of setting aside a rack of dresses according to your stated tastes."

She paused, turning to look at the quartet, before adding, "And your budget," in a sneering voice.

Molly and Sara bristled at the comment, but Hermione shook her head at the two. "Put that away!" Hermione whispered to Molly who was pulling her wand out of the sleeve of her robes. The red-haired woman scowled deeply, but replaced her wand nonetheless and followed the procession into the secluded area.

Hermione gulped at what greeted her. The saleswoman had said 'rack', but what she should have said were 'racks'. The place was crammed with them, with dresses galore stuffed into place. The metal bars were sagging with the weight of each wedding gown ranging from Princess/Prom Queen-Poofy-Skirt-Watch-Where-You're-Walking-I'm-A- Tripper, to Slender-Elegant-And-I'll-Show-Everything-You-May-Or-May-Not-Be-Wearing-Under-This-Dress, dresses. Hermione could feel the beginnings of a panic attack.

**-x-**

Forty-five dresses later and one whiny, bratty child later, and Hermione was close to going to her own wedding in a pair of jeans and jumper. She was sure Ron wouldn't mind; not really… At least she had said yes right?

"Oh, Hermione, just try on one more dress, and then we can leave," Molly exasperatedly said, bouncing Grace on her knee, the latter of whom was nursing her thumb with thick tears falling over her cheeks. "We'll go and get something to eat."

The saleswoman said something that faintly resembled "If you can afford it" under her breath, but Hermione and her company were too tired and angry to even raise a hand to the bitchy woman.

"One more dress, and if this isn't it, I'm going elsewhere," Hermione said scanning a rack half-heartedly. "Somewhere that has better dresses. And nicer salespeople."

"I beg your pardon, but-"

The saleswoman was drowned out by Sara who raised her voice in agreement, standing and helping her daughter in her search. "This one looks like a possibility," She said finally, holding out a cream, strapless, taffeta gown with silk roses and crystals sewn into the long train that flowed three feet behind the gown.

Hermione looked warily at the dress. It was one of the better ones, and one of the few that was in their price range, leaving money to spare for a veil. "It's kind of… Fancy schmancy, you know?"

"Just try on the dress, Hermione, I'm sure this one is it," Sara said, pulling it off the rack and turning to show Molly who nodded in agreement. Hermione looked skeptical, but took the dress nonetheless and moved over to a partitioned changing area.

The fabric was smooth and cool against her skin and fit snugly around her waist, flowing out and lying slightly on the floor, giving enough length to hide a pair of heels. Crystals were embroidered in a rose pattern across the bodice, giving it an added sparkle when she turned to and fro under the florescent light. Small, silk roses graced the train. Hermione was a bit peeved to admit it, but this just _could_ be the dress for her. It was refreshingly different, yet elegant, something that wasn't too left-field of Hermione's personal style.

"Come on! Let's see!" Came Molly's voice from just the other side of the partition.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Hermione sighed, sweeping away the cloth hangings and stepping out into the room. Her mother gasped her approval, along with Molly, who had stood and was bouncing Grace absentmindedly on her hip as she appraised Hermione.

"You look beautiful in that dress! Please say that's the one you're getting?"

Even the nasty saleswoman who had had a retort for every dress and why it wasn't the right one had nothing to say. She merely straightened to her full height and huffed in a surprising, yet condescending, way before turning and walking out of the room in a swirl of Chanel No.5, and expensive clothes, sweeping the tension from the area as she went.

"That's the one, right? I mean, it's perfect!" Sara exclaimed, looking at Hermione through the three-way mirror. "Wait till Ron sees you in this."

"Yeah," Hermione whispered, turning around so that she could see what the back looked like. But her mind wasn't on Ron, and what he would think of it. They were sharply focused on what a certain blond would think, and what it would feel like to have his hands undressing her on their wedding night. She blushed red when she visualized the very act that would ensue and both women behind her chuckled, sharing a knowing look between them. Finally snapping out of reverie, Hermione placed her hands on her hips and said piercingly, "Oh, get off it, it's not like we're virgins, or anything!"

The women continued to share that look, smiling like insane people.

"Maybe not, but the wedding night's always different, Hermione," Molly supplied, rocking back and forth as Grace lay her head on her shoulder, her eyelids drooping closed. "You'll see. Just wait for it. Then, one day, it'll be you and Grace in this position and you'll know what we meant."

**-x-**

As the wedding grew ever closer, Hermione couldn't squash the feeling that something was going to go terribly wrong in marrying Ron. Sure, there was their horrible past in school, and the fact that she had another man's baby and was still in love with him, albeit secretly, but it shouldn't have been that horrible. Right? Ron was there, and had made true on his promise, that he wasn't going to treat her like he had during their seventh year, and so far, nothing had transpired incriminating between them. And yet… There had to be a reason as to why he had never come.

He had been so excited, or at least, he pretended to be. Surely a man who wanted a child with a woman he loved wouldn't run out on them the day his daughter was born? Or would he? Was it some type of male fear, being tied down with a wife who loved you desperately and a child who would irrevocably and simply because you were their father?

She exhausted herself for days and weeks, choosing instead to busy herself in a wedding that wasn't entirely wanted on one side of the party, but couldn't help a bit of excitement from washing over her. It was after all, every girls dream…

The impending feeling that she signing her life away to the wrong man plagued her dreams and every morning Grace could sense the sorrow in her mother's actions. Even for a baby, she was more reserved, and clung to her mother, smiling less and less, and sinking into same depressed state as Hermione.

"Are you excited?" It was the weekend before her wedding, and Hermione and her mother were making center pieces for the reception tables. The kitchen was littered with tea lights and flowers that weren't to Sara's expectation. With only three days left until Hermione and Grace both changed their names, Sara was the only one in the house who seemed the happiest. And the most oblivious. The only one attuned to Hermione's depressed state, besides her daughter, was John, who under many failed attempts, had quit trying to talk to his child, to warn her of the hazards of marriage for the wrong reasons.

"Of course," Hermione replied, arranging an array of white roses in the water. "Why?"

"I don't know," Sara said, arranging her own piece with extra care. She sighed motherly and took the center piece Hermione had just done, rearranging it again to her own specifications. "I'm excited, you should be too."

"God, Mum, you act like _you're_ the one getting married!" Hermione joked, smiling in a stressed sort of way and starting on the next center piece.

"Well, it's not like Daddy and I had a real wedding!" Sara replied, shaking her head as she busied herself.

"You didn't?" Hermione exclaimed, nearly toppling over a vase of water.

"Of course not!" Sara said. "Haven't I ever told you the story?"

"No," Hermione replied, her attention devoted solely unto her mother.

"Well, I thought I did," Sara sighed again, not meeting Hermione's gaze. "Remember how I told you about Daddy freaking out when I told him I was pregnant with you?"

At Hermione's nod, she continued, "It's because we weren't married. We were starting our freshman year of university. I was studying art history and your father was studying pre-med stuff, you know? Chemistry and things like that. We'd known each other through mutual friends for a couple of months before we went on our first date. And then things happened so fast and before I knew it, I was pregnant and unmarried, and didn't have any money! When I told your father, he said he'd wanted to marry me anyway, just that now we'd have to do it sooner. So your father and I set up a meeting with Father Peter and he married us three weeks later."

"That's the real story between you two?" Hermione asked incredulously. The story was actually _very_ similar to her own. Except she hadn't married the father of her child and things ended up shitty and definitely _not_ the way they were supposed to.

"I know what you felt like, Angel," Sara said soothingly, taking one of Hermione's hands in her own. "It'll be hard, before it gets better."

**-x-**

The day of their wedding started out easy enough. Sara took charge of Grace, and Molly enlisted the help of her children and Hermione's cousins in setting up the reception. Hermione could only imagine how the Magical and Muggle parties were handling being thrust together so unceremoniously.

Hermione fretted in her room for an hour before she took a hurried shower and blew dry her hair, straightening it in a way that she knew Ron liked. It wasn't long before she had her dress in hand and was walking with her dad to the car so that they could go to the church.

"Are you nervous?" John asked softly, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. He entered the motorway cautiously, checking all mirrors and signaling minutes before he made a lane change. The difference in her parents driving skills never ceased in amazing her. With her dad, Hermione could have easily and comfortably fallen asleep, but with her mother, the thought of sleep was the last thing she even wanted contemplating doing.

"A little bit," Hermione replied. "That's normal right?"

"I guess so, honey. I think it's different for everyone."

"How did you feel when you married Mum?"

John sighed, exiting the motorway and turning onto a side street that would take them to the church. "Content," He finally supplied. "I knew that your mother was the one."

"How?" Hermione asked, breathless.

"I can't explain it really," John said uncomfortably. "It was just the way she smiled and listened to me, like I had something important to say. She didn't shy away when I told her things, things that I wasn't proud of. She just-"

"-accepted you," Hermione finished, turning forward in her seat and staring out the windshield.

They arrived at the church and unloaded from the car, John taking his daughter's dress for her as Hermione grabbed a bag that held everything else she would need. Both were silent as they walked into an antechamber of the chapel.

"I'll leave you to get ready then," John said, rocking forward on the balls of his feet, his hands stuffed in his pockets. "If you need me, I'll just be next door."

"OK, Daddy," Hermione said, her voice sullen. She fingered the plastic protecting her gown and looked down at the floor. "If Mum comes by, tell her to come in, please."

"Will do, Sweetie," John said, sighing heavily and leaving the room without another word. He seemed eager to get away.

Hermione dressed in complete silence, pushing any thoughts about Draco Malfoy from her mind. She couldn't think about him, not now. It wasn't fair to Ron, who, let's face it, had already been through enough with Hermione when it came to him. He deserved this one, little justice.

There was a knock at the door and then Molly and Sara were slipping into the room, cooing at Hermione and helping her to fix her veil, just right.

"Where's Grace?" Hermione asked, as Sara gave her a pearl necklace that had been passed through their family for four generations.

"With Ginny, in the reception hall," Molly replied, taking a package out of her pocket and placing it on the dressing table before Hermione. "A little something, from Arthur and I."

"Oh, Molly," Hermione said, taking it. "You shouldn't have. Thank you."

Molly beamed. Hermione tore the wrapping paper from the package and opened a oblong velvet box, revealing a bracelet of pearls adorned with a pendant made of what looked like ivory, of a heart inscribed with the profiles of a man and woman kissing.

"Oh, my God, it's so beautiful!" Hermione exclaimed, lying it across her wrist, where her mother secured it.

"It's been in our family for over two hundred years, back when Weasleys had money and were more respected," Molly explained, smoothing back fly-away hairs nervously.

"I respect you, Molly, and your family," Hermione assured her, standing and embracing the woman in a heart-felt hug. "Thank you, so much."

Molly didn't say anything, but sniffled a bit when they released one another.

"Everyone decent?" John called, opening the door and peering in. "The wedding's about to start."

"Oh, right!" Sara said, kissing Hermione's cheek. "Good luck, luv."

Hermione felt like assuring her mother she'd need it, but refrained. Molly smiled tearfully and followed Sara out of the room.

John and Hermione left through a back door and out into the courtyard, as chatter in the chapel ceased and a light music could be heard wafting out through the lazy spring day towards them.

"You know, Hermione," John started, stopping them just before he got to the steps leading to the chapel's doors. "I've been meaning to talk to you about something."

"What's wrong?"

Swallowing loudly, John ran a hand over his daughter's cheek and said, "Marrying a person, no matter how much you may love them, when you're still committed to someone who is not there and in love with them more than life itself, can't and won't work, 'Mione."

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked as her stomach dropped to the floor. She could feel beads of sweat forming on the back of her neck.

"Don't think that marrying Ron will make your life easier. Don't hurt him with false pretense," John clarified.

Hermione nodded her head as the wedding music began and the doors swung open, seemingly on their own accord. She felt like a fish out of water as she walked down the aisle, each step taking her closer and closer to impending doom.

What the hell was she doing? She couldn't marry Ron, I mean, her dad was right! She was still in love with Draco.

Her feet faltered and then stopped, tugging on John's arm. He turned and looked at his daughter, who was worrying her lower lip between her teeth. Perhaps it hadn't been a smart choice to say that to her, so close to her nuptials. Then again, maybe it had. Ron's grin faltered some, but he didn't move from his spot at the altar.

She felt like turning tail and running. Like grabbing Grace and running as far and as fast as her high-heeled feet could carry her. She felt like apparating anywhere and everywhere she knew that Malfoy lived/visited/meted and demanding that he answer why he had never come for her. Why he had left her for Ron. Their baby didn't deserve the turmoil that would ensue. Already, everyday, she began to look more and more like him. Her once brown hair turning a bright shade of blond, and her grey eyes as piercing as her fathers. What would she do when she realized that Ron couldn't be her father? How was Hermione supposed to explain that.

But then she blinked, and instead of seeing Draco waiting for her at the end of the aisle, there was Ron. Dear, sweet, pathetic Ron. Who loved her so dearly and passionately, and yet… He wasn't enough. He could never be what she wanted nor give her just what she needed.

But she chose him.

She'd have to live with that choice, everyday, for the rest of her life.

_Maybe, with time, things will be better, and this hurt that I'm feeling will cease to be, and Draco will just fade into nothing more than a memory_, Hermione thought, sucking in a deep breath.

And with that, she exhaled, and Draco Malfoy was expunged from her person. Holding her head high, she plastered a smile on her face and began to walk again, this time more purposefully, towards her future.

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**A/N:** ** Only one more chapter!!!! And for all you Draco fans, he's coming back!!!!! There will be Draco in the next chapter, and a hell of a lot of him in the sequel, obviously. It's late, and I don't feel like editing, so just ignore the mistakes, por favor.**

**As always, review!**

♥ **I've Got Another Confession to Make**


	20. All Hail the Heartbreaker

**A/N: This is it!!!! The last chapter!!! Sequel is definitely going to be titled, **_**Keeping the Moon**_**, so keep your eyes open for it!**

**It's been a long journey, but I love you all for reading and reviewing! Do me one last honor and review the last chapter of **_**The Art of Seduction**_

**Much love,**

**I've Got Another Confession to Make**

Chapter Twenty: All Hail the Heartbreaker

I will sleep another day  
I don't really need to anyway  
What's the point when my dreams are infected  
With words you used to say  
I will breathe in a moment  
As long as I keep my distance  
I wouldn't want to go messing anything up

So don't go worrying about me  
It's not like I think about you constantly  
So maybe I do, but that shouldn't affect  
Your life anymore  
I knew it the moment you walked into the door

**-x-**

There she was again. His female carbon copy, darting between the legs of the swarms of people littering Diagon Alley, glancing back over her shoulder at him, her bright eyes alight in fear.

"Wait!" He called, shoving between two men and dashing after her. The child shrieked and broke into a run, disappearing in a surge of witches crooning on about sales on Potions ingredients and live mice. He ignored this, his grey eyes searching the crowd desperately.

Finally, _finally_, after all this time, she was here. She was here and he was here and soon they'd be together again. Together with their son, and their daughter, who he had first seen in Flourish and Blott's, her mother's child through and through. He smiled despite himself and emerged through the crowd of witches, scanning the crowded street for his family.

He had the perfect reason as to why he hadn't been there, and it had broken his heart into a million pieces to have to miss the experience of welcoming his children into the world, but he was sure, no, he was _positive_ that she would forgive him, if not soon, then eventually. He would work everyday if he had to, just to prove to her how sorry he was.

If only he could find her.

Five years. Five years had aged him. Five years had changed him. But five years could not still the swell of his heart with the mere thought of her. No, nothing could quell that sensation. He was sure of that.

Ah, there she was, ducking into another store, her fearful grey eyes fixed on him as she disappeared into the darkened store.

"Hey!" He called just as her long, blond hair followed its owner into the dark room.

He pushed his way through the crowds, knocking down an old woman, and pausing momentarily to apologize profusely and help her gather her purchases before standing and continuing with his quest.

She was right there, he could feel. He knew she was waiting, that she had waited, how could she have not? They were in love, things were going to be perfect, and things were going to work out the way they were supposed to. Just five years after they should have.

His heart began to pound ferociously in his chest. His ribs hurt from the hammering against his bones. The tissue of his muscles were clenching and unclenching, sending spasms up and down his arms and legs. In the window he spotted his carbon copy before she saw him looking at her and darted away.

"Dammit," He muttered under his breath before he finally broke through the last stragglers and nearly tripped flat on his face. Smoothing his hair back away from his face and straightening his robes, he regally opened the door, looking up at the little bell that announced his presence. He sniffed, staring down a little boy with black hair, faintly resembling Potter, before turning his gaze on the other shoppers, none of whom even seemed to care that a man who had been missing for the greater part of half a decade had just strode back into their midst.

Clearing his throat, his hands kept smoothing over his robes, wiping away beads of sweat. Nervousness was pouring over him in waves.

Now that he was here, he wasn't sure that he could do it. He couldn't find her. Could he? What would she really think if he just cornered her in a shop and claimed to not be a ghost haunting her? Or worse yet, what if she had found someone else to love?

No, she wouldn't, couldn't do that. He was sure of that.

The little girl he had trailed came out from behind a shelf, her little hands on her hips, and a look on her visage that screamed her mother. He smiled. Yes, this was definitely, his baby girl.

"Why are you following me?" She asked, her childlike voice, surprisingly mature. He didn't know how to respond. Did you just go out and tell a child that you're their father? Was that the right thing to do? Was someone else in the store going to think he was trying to kidnap her if he swooped her up in a hug and planted kisses all over her face?

"It's rude not to respond, you know!" She said, her little hands growing white with the pressure with which she was keeping them on her hips. Her pink lips even brighter as she pursed them together.

"And it's rude to talk to your elders like that, young lady," He admonished, crossing his arms over his chest.

The girl crossed her own arms and stared up at him with narrowed eyes. "You are not my father."

_Wanna bet?_ Draco felt like replying, but only managed to smirk instead. His daughter mimicked him. Oh, it felt nice to talk to her, this little creation of his.

"Grace, who are you talking to?"

And then she appeared, like an angel in the darkness. Her hair was shorter, sleeker, and her face was tan as were her arms and legs. Her brown eyes were as sharp as ever, and when she admonished their child, he felt a tightness in his heart. Here she was. For real. This wasn't a dream. No, it couldn't be, though he had dreamt of her every night and day for five extremely long years. He felt like slapping himself, just to be sure.

"I told you young lady that you need to be nicer to people, even if you don't know them, it's just rude to act like a brat," Hermione reprimanded, juggling something in her arms, that he couldn't focus on. Here she was. His beautiful girl.

"Well, maybe if other people weren't rude to me, I wouldn't be rude back!" Grace countered, her hands back on her hips.

"That's it," Hermione said, pulling her by the arm away. Draco felt like fainting. "When we get home, you're not getting any dessert and going straight to bed!"

"But that's not fair!"

"I swear, you're more and more like your father everyday," Hermione said, turning and pulling the struggling Grace with her. Draco could have smiled, he was so happy with being compared to his daughter.

"It was all _his_ fault! Don't blame me!" Grace wined pointing to Draco.

"All who's-"

And then she stopped, having turned in mid-sentence to see just who was the subject of her daughter's temper tantrum. Her face turned ashen and her eyes widened in shock. Grace looked between her mother and unknown long-lost father with interest.

Draco took a step closer and could see the tears swimming through Hermione's eyes. He reached out and cupped her face in his hands, smiling crookedly at her, wiping away tears as they fell. Her bottom lip trembled and he could see she was trying to keep it from her mouth, from working it between her teeth.

"Draco?" She whispered. He felt like his heart could burst, hearing his name leave her lips, just as though she had kept it in for as long as she could, and the whisper with which it left her lips was her dying breath.

So he did the one thing to make her his, and give her the breath she needed to live. He swooped in to her and pulled her lean body flush against his, and covered her lips with his own.

She moaned into his kiss, but didn't respond in any other way. Her lips were stoic against his, but that didn't matter. It was as though they had never spent time apart from one another. It was like the first time his lips had touched hers, the same rush of emotion, the swell of her heart's internal happiness, only now, she didn't throw herself into it. Perhaps it was he that was different, more desperate, seducing her heart back into a catatonic state of adoration.

_I can honestly say that I never, ever, ever felt this way. Your lips, your eyelashes, your skin, these are the parts of your body that cause my comatose to begin._

Draco felt like crying with happiness. He didn't care who was here. Who would see him crying. He was here, where he belonged, kissing the woman he had loved for what felt like forever. How could things possibly be worse?

Then she pushed him away, hard. Her hand left a burning sensation on his skin despite the fact that robes were blocking skin-to-skin contact. He licked his lips, tasting her on his lips still even as she raised a shocked hand to her mouth and touched herself, speechless.

It was Grace who broke the silence.

"How dare you kiss _my_ mummy!" She cried, coming forward and punching Draco straight in the crotch, sending him doubled over in pain. Hermione gasped and yanked Grace back and away.

"Gracie! We do not hit people! You know better than that!" Hermione reprimanded. She placed a hand on Draco's shoulder and bent slightly to try to meet his eye. "Draco, are you alright?"

"I'll live," He wheezed, grinning at her through his blond fringe. "Though, I can't promise any future Malfoy's."

Hermione's face turned even, if possible, more ashen and she nearly dropped the load in her arms. Draco turned his attention to the bundle and squinted in confusion.

"Who's kid are you watching? Looks like a Weasley," He observed, standing straight.

"Draco, you were gone," Hermione said in explanation.

"And now I'm back," He countered, holding his arms out as if in proof. "So go give back whichever Weasel that is and let's get going," He swept her up in her arms and whispered seductively, "It's been a long time and you're still as sexy as ever, Mione. I don't think you quite realize what you're doing to me."

"I can guess," Hermione stated, shoving away from him, a look of indignation on her features. "We need to talk."

"Can't we do that later?" Draco asked, pouting slightly. Hermione narrowed her eyes, "You haven't changed a bit, have you?"

Draco grinned, "But you don't love me any less, do you?"

Hermione didn't respond. She merely turned on her heel and marched over to a redhead, dragging Grace behind her. Draco watched as the woman, who turned out to be Ginny Weasley, quite possibly Potter, took the bundle and Grace's hand with a guarded look his way. Raising an eyebrow, Draco sighed and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"Come on," Hermione said, rushing out of the store, with her head bowed. "Let's go before he sees us."

"Before _who_ sees you?" Draco asked, jogging to keep up with her.

Hermione turned suddenly into a darkened alley, pulling him by the neck of his robes after her.

"A bit kinky, don't you think? With all the people walking by, anyone could see us," Draco whispered, advancing on her. "I like this new side of you."

"Shove it," Hermione said, turning away and walking several paces ahead to keep out of arms reach. "Where the hell have you been?"

She asked so sullenly, so woefully, that Draco felt the exact pressure he had been carrying for years return tenfold. He would give anything to take that back. To have been smarter, wiser and known that he would be kept from her back then, when he was young and stupid enough to impregnate her in first place.

"I'll tell you, one day, love, but for now, I just want to be with you," Draco said, coming towards her to kiss her.

"Stop," Hermione said, raising a hand and pressing it to his chest, keeping him the allotted three feet from her that allowed her to keep a clear mind. "I want answers, and I want them now."

"I can't tell you, Hermione," Draco said, raising his hands into the air. "I just can't. You're going to have to trust me when I say that I want to so bad, but things are safe right now. I'll tell you, I promise, when I take you and our children and go back to the manor."

"We can't go with you; Grace and I live already in a home."

"What about our son? Where is he? You haven't mentioned him at all in this conversation," Draco asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

He immediately wished he hadn't asked. The look on her face was enough of an answer. Tears gathered in her eyes, but did not fall, and her lower lips trembled harshly until she drew it into her mouth and chewed it between her teeth.

"He didn't survive birth, Draco," She finally spewed, a single tear tracing down her face. "He was stillborn. You would have known that, had you been there."

And again, the anger surfaced, masking the pain and hurt. She felt like slapping him, and did, once and then twice for good measure.

"I know I deserved that," Draco said, working his jaw from side to side. "I know I did, and I wish that I had been there. But Hermione, I couldn't come-"

"For reasons that you have yet to disclose and yet you expect me to come on bended knee with _my_ daughter back into your arms like _everything_ is OK? You expect me to come back to your manor and marry you and make love to you every night like the past five years haven't happened?!"

"OK," Draco said, raising one hand into the air, anger sweeping into his body like a tornado. "She's _our_ daughter and yes-"

"No! She's _my_ daughter! She's _mine!_ If you want to lay claim to her, then you should have been there! You should have found a way! You can't claim someone you don't know, Malfoy!"

"Oh, are we back to last names again, are we?" Draco yelled, advancing on her and pinning her against the brick wall. "Well, _Granger_, what do you want from me?"

"My name isn't Granger," Hermione said silkily, looking up at him through thick, dark lashes. Her words pierced his heart, just as she had meant for them to.

"What are you on about?" Draco asked, as in shock he took a step back and away from her. He felt like he had been hit with a wall of bricks.

In response, Hermione help up her left hand, where gracing her ring finger was a modest diamond wedding band.

Draco swooned.

"No- Hermione, you didn't. You should have known I'd come back, that I was going to find you," He whispered, stepping farther and farther away her.

"How could I?" Hermione whispered back, all anger suddenly absent from her. "You didn't write or anything. I had no way to even know that you were alive, Draco."

"You married _Weasley_ didn't you?" Draco sneered.

"Don't talk about him that way!" Hermione bellowed, advancing. "He has been nothing but good to me, and to Grace. He adores her!"

"Well, I'm so pleased that _my_ fiancé found it in her heart to forget about me and move on!"

Hermione scoffed. "Move on? How could I move on? I dream of you every night." She raised a hand to his face and traced his sunken cheeks, his heavily lidded eyes. He leaned into the touch and she raised her other hand as well, cradling him in her arms. "I still love you so bad it hurts every time he touches me. I think it's you calling my name in the street. I hear your voice still and whenever I open my eyes fast enough, I swear I can see you, sleeping next to me, staring at me, waiting for me to notice you."

Draco suppressed the intense need to kiss her. But he needn't have worried. For the next thing he knew, Hermione had pressed her body flush against him and was kissing him as though she had never kissed him before. Passionately and so seductively, he felt his knees buckle.

Falling back against the wall, he deepened their kiss, nearly crying in relief when she returned it, running her hands repeatedly through his long locks and wrapping her legs about his waist.

It was as though they had never been absent from one another.

The need to be close was palpable. Had anyone been there to witness it, they themselves would have tugged at their collars and cleared their throats as if trying to pretend the sight before them were not happening.

Hermione groaned deeply into his mouth as their tongues brushed one another's. Her heart began to pound in her chest and through a complete air-headed moment so unlike her, she found herself clawing at his robes, buttons flying every which way as he fell to the ground and brought her down on top of him.

He returned a groan to her, rolling over on top of her, sending shivers up and down her spine as he lifted her shirt over her head, kissing every inch of exposed flesh he could before he was pulled back up to her mouth and every other thought was lost.

"Draco," Hermione whispered, pulling his head back by grabbing a fistful of his hair.

"What?" He asked huskily, his eyes searching her face.

"I want you, I want you so bad."

And just like that they went flying over the boundary of what was acceptable. Hermione tumbled into the territory of adulteress and Draco, her lover, and neither seemed to care.

When he entered her, she felt the all familiar warmth flare up inside her. How she had slept with Ron, after this? After this passion? And the emotion that she still harbored for Draco Malfoy… It was unbelievable, the way he made her fall right back into her teenaged shoes, crying for him and clutching him desperately to her. Tears leaked from her eyes, as he kissed her and ran his fingers lightly over her skin. It didn't matter where they were, or the fact that her husband was most likely searching for her at that very moment. It actually made it more exciting, the very notion that she _could_ be caught.

This great and yet terrible beauty that had taken over her mind, body and soul, was a complete art, she decided as he captured her lips and spilled his seed into her.

_The art of seduction…_

…

…

…

I'll let you get the best of me  
Because there's nothing else that I do well  
I'll be the giver and you'll be the taker  
I guess that's how this one's gonna go I'll be the giver and you'll be the taker  
You've got me down on my knees and I proclaim  
All hail the heartbreaker

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**A/N: Well that's it! I hope you liked it! I'm not sure when the sequel will be out, but it won't be long. At least I hope not. The lyrics are by The Spill Canvas, titled All Hail the Heartbreaker.**

**Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed! And let's all do it together now! One last time, for old time's sake. :**

**Many thanks!**

♥ **I've Got Another Confession to Make**


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